Moonlight Shining Through
by riveroad
Summary: Spike and Winnie find their way through a relationship - via a series of out-of-order one shots. Main underlying theme is fluff (even with the hard stuff, there's fluff). Guest appearances by the rest of Team One. Rated for language.
1. All Those Late Night Promises

**All Those Late Night Promises**

Every time he opens his mouth to ask, you know, what in the hell they're doing, Winnie shushes him. They're standing on the sidewalk six and a half blocks from work and it's cold and his nose feels like it's about to freeze right off his face even though the mercury's hovering above zero (all that lovely wind chill Toronto's so famous for).

He rolls his eyes at her, tugs her a little closer to him by her coat, wonders how she's even standing there with it unbuttoned. "Win-"

"Shh. Just wait."

He wants to say that he's cold and he'd really rather be at home (in bed), uncovering all that deliciously smooth skin and keeping each other warm. He just huffs, keeps waiting. "Okay, seriously-"

"Hang on."

He rolls his eyes again, mournfully wonders when exactly he lost any semblance of control in this relationship and ruefully realizes he probably never even had it. It's just - she smiles at him and he hears himself agreeing to whirly-ball and hanging out with her girlfriends (she gave him a look at that one, told him she was kidding and of course wasn't going to put him through six hours of girl talk. He uh - he went anyway. All of them pounced on him asking for advice with what guys meant by not texting for days at a time. Winnie laughed her ass off at him and then when they got home, went down on him while he was in the middle of asking her if he should take the broccoli out of the freezer). "Winnie-" He feels a drop of rain land right on the top of his head. "Okay, it's raining so can we possibly-"

"I know it's raining," she says, like she's speaking to a particularly bratty child. "I checked the weather before we left."

He knows he's got a confused look on his face, figures his mouth is probably a little open but come on, he's getting wet here. They both are. And it's still cold. "You checked for rain and then made us stand in the street for no reason?"

"Got a problem with that?" She's grinning up at him.

"I-no. No I don't." It's true, actually. Winnie wants to stand on the sidewalk in the rain, he is a-okay to oblige that. Probably something he should examine closer.

It's starting to rain heavier, cars making that slippery smooth sound over the asphalt and Winnie's hair is starting to curl (so if anyone's looking for a confession, he kind of likes it when her hair's all normal, curls he can wrap around his fingers. Of course, he also likes her hair when it's straight. Also, when she spends forty minutes in front of the mirror with a curling iron so it's entirely possible that that confession isn't really a confession at all).

She snickers suddenly.

"What?" He pushes his wet hair off his forehead.

"Okay, so it's time."

"Time for wha-"

She leans up against him, slides both hands over either side of his face and kisses him full on the mouth. They're not usually big into pda, obviously, so much time spent at work and like hi, unprofessional, but they usually draw the line at holding hands when they leave together. He loops an arm around her waist, slides the other inside her coat (also, here's another confession, he likes the way her clothes fit her - also like how she looks with no clothes so probably another confession that's not really a confession).

Her mouth is all warm, soft and she tastes like Sweethearts ("of course they're not just for Valentine's day, Spike, come on, don't you want one? Here, this one says 'hug me' so you should probably do what it says"). Winnie kisses like she's laughing and it always makes him feel like his heart's about to burst right out of his chest.

There's rain dripping off his face right onto hers and they're both getting progressively soggier and he's pretty sure that if he ever gets her home, her feet are going to be wet and cold and she's going to want to press them against him, but also, when a girl like Winnie's kissing you, you don't ask questions and you certainly don't pull away. She does though, just a little, grins up at him, flashes her teeth.

"What are we doing out here?" he asks and he knows he's grinning right back at her.

She rolls her eyes like she thinks he's slow, all come on Spike, keep up, we're going to Oakville for the day to sit by the lake duh. "We are kissing in the rain," she informs him. "Obviously."

He snorts, runs one hand over his face, tries to wipe off all the rain water. "Yeah okay, I got that part. But why are we-"

"Cause I want to know what all those pop songs are talking about," she says. "Cause I never have before. Cause it's nice out here with you. You need me to keep going?"

He laughs. "Uh no. No, I don't think so. Think I got it."

She's giving him that look, the one that makes him think he's done or said something that she finds totally enthralling (sometimes he has no idea what he's done to deserve the look at all). "You happy?"

He's a little taken aback at the question, no idea how to answer it, figures honesty is a good way to go. "Very."

She smiles, real bright like she's showing him how she's painted her toenails a brilliant teal. "Good. That's good."

"You?"

She laughs, like she's hearing the punch line of a joke without him. "Oh yeah, I'd say I'm pretty happy."

He narrows his eyes at her a little. "So. All that not dating cops stuff..."

(They've never talked about it, just, he came in one day and they were laughing and he looked at her and said, "Throw your rule out the window," and she stopped mid-laugh, mouth slightly open and then swallowed and said, "But-" and he said, "No buts," and she spluttered a little but then she cleared her throat and said, "I'm going to warn you that I was skeptical about this from the get go. Okay." There was pink on the tops of her cheekbones.

He's never looked back.)

She lets out a breath. "Load of shit. Obviously." Her voice is still light but the way she's looking at him-

He laughs, is going to let it go, going to suggest they head inside, out of the rain, finish walking home, get in a cab, get on the bus, he doesn't really care.

But she catches his wrist, doesn't meet his eyes and says, "I should have known it would be different with you."

He swallows. "Yeah probably." He doesn't know where exactly she's going with this but he's really fighting to keep his voice carefree. He doesn't know if it's a self-preservation thing or if he always just shies away from the hard conversations (except - he thinks about Lew's funeral, Lew's mother holding his hand tightly and him completely tearless, Winnie sitting behind him, how she leaned forward and laid her hand on his back, let him breathe again. They've never talked about that but it's never really seemed like they needed to).

She rolls her eyes at him. "Spike."

"You don't have to-"

"I just thought you should know that I'm falling in love with you. And um. Pretty much I'm terrified. So."

His ears are ringing, like he just stood next to reverberating church bells or like this time when he was eleven, went to Italy with his parents for the summer, fell off a pier, thought he was going to drown, water closing in over his head, all the sound above him muted and low.

She laughs but she also looks like really worried and, he gets it, he does, all those people he's had to bury, wakes up in the night sometimes afraid that one day it'll be her, a bank or a grocery store or a mall and he'll be too late. Somehow, he's always too late right when it counts. He's afraid of the rest of it too though, that the hours will drive them apart, that she'll get sick of seeing him all the time (he's just _not_, is the thing. Not sick of seeing her every single day, sometimes wishes he could see her even more than he already does) or she'll get fed up of the jokes, of how hard he finds it to have a serious conversation. He's afraid that one day, he'll fall short, the way he has with every other relationship he's ever been in.

"You don't have to-okay, well, should we go?" Her voice is light, like she's suggesting they hike a mile in the snow just to get proper tacos.

"I-Winnie-"

She shrugs and she doesn't look disappointed at all, still looks scared though and that's-he can't stand that. "Spike, it's okay-"

"I just-I'm already there. Probably was before I even asked you out. So." He clears his throat.

She's frozen, this expression on her face like she's just seen a huge centipede running across the floor in front of her (and like, she can kill her own spiders, change her own light bulbs, has gone sky-diving before but centipedes are something she calls him into the room for and he's just-he never rolls his eyes at her when she does). "Um. Oh."

His eyebrows shoot up and he snorts. "Oh?"

"Oh," she confirms, smiles tentatively at him.

He rolls his eyes. "Okay well. If we're all good here, can we go? I'm cold." He starts walking, kind of expects her to start too, slide her hand into his pocket, or loop her arm through is but she's still standing there and he swallows. "Winnie?"

"Yeah, I lied with all that falling stuff. I'm not in the process. Pretty much right there. You know. Already there. Probably around that time I opened your cupboard and saw you'd bought Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Cause. I know you hate it."

He's not sure why that's what did it but it's not like it was such a hardship to add the cereal she likes to his grocery list (it's just-she's over all the time and he likes it when she stays the night and she's got to eat in the morning so. Cereal. Also, that awful peanuts-only peanut butter she has at her place). "Uh. Okay?"

She grins suddenly, and it does that thing to his heart that it always does and he can't help but smile back at her. "'Kay."

They start walking and he keeps glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, how she keeps smiling to herself, thinks about the fact that she's right there with him in this and that it feels like it makes sense in a way it never has with anyone else. She slips her hand into his pocket and he grins to himself as he slides his hand in too, links their fingers together.

He thinks about all the things he wants to say the whole way back to his place, holds in all those words and she's standing in front of him saying something about peas as she slides off her wet coat and he turns to shut the door, says what he's been thinking to wood and steel instead of to her.

"I'm um. Not scared exactly. But. S'not easy. To feel like this." She doesn't say a word and when he glances behind him to see if she's still standing there, she's looking right at him. "I keep thinking I'm going to screw it up."

She nods slowly. "Yeah. I mean. Me too."

They stand there for a few moments and he wonders why exactly it is that he's suddenly not that worried about messing this up anymore.

She steps forward, tugs on the front of his coat and then snickers. "Wanna go upstairs?"

He snorts because yes, of course he does, he's a _guy_ and she's beautiful, like he never not wants to. She leans up, pecks his lips and then races up the stairs like whoever gets there first gets a prize. He laughs, follows her up, the two of them starting down that path that's gotten so familiar.

But it's different too, when he kisses her it's like he tastes the weight of everything they've said, and when she leans against him, he feels like he's got to be both strong and weak for her, feels like every touch, every brush of her fingers against him is burning right through his skin. So. He tells her that. Thinks isn't it funny that the one person who hasn't asked him to be more honest with her, hasn't asked him to drop the jokes or be more serious is the one person he wants to be honest and serious with.

She looks down at him from where she's straddling his hips, his arms around her and she takes a shuddering breath, says, "Love you, Spike," right against his skin.

He says it back. Means it.


	2. Things That Drift Away

**Things That Drift Away**

The day starts in the middle of the night, a dream that has him gasping awake, cold sweat and eyes wide open. He can't go back to sleep after that, keeps seeing what happened even though it didn't really happen, sees it even with his eyes open. He walks around his house, checks that all the doors are locked, watches an old infomercial for the Magic Bullet in the dark, thinks Mick and Mimi have a lot of weird friends.

He's early to work, gets in an extra hour of work out before the rest of the team trickles in, like if he runs far enough, he can leave all the bad stuff behind. He lounges around near the desk, talks to Winnie (it's just – she didn't sleep over last night and possibly, it's like he missed her? Which is ridiculous, he saw her less than twelve hours ago but he's looking at her now and it feels like he hasn't seen her in weeks, wonders if he'd have had the dream if she'd been there, soft skin pressed against him, eyelashes dark against her cheekbones). He's forcing it, the jokes, the laughs, just a little, doesn't think she can tell, is torn between seeing her smile and just wanting to feel _normal_. He's tired and still reeling from the nightmare he had but this part is soothing, always has been, filled with things that make sense, right answers.

He leans his elbows on the top of her desk. "You coming over later?"

Winnie raises her eyebrows at him, smile playing at her mouth and despite how he's feeling, he smiles back a little too. "You want me to?"

"I want you to come say hi. If _you_ want to."

She looks like she's trying to fight a grin. "I could do that."

"Then you probably should," he says, wonders what in the hell his issue is that she smiles up at him and he wants to lean right over the desk and kiss her.

She clears her throat. "Okay then. I'll see you later."

"Okay."

Shift is brutal, makes him feel like everything is just pointless and it's cold and raining and okay, yeah, Spike will be the first to admit that he's in a filthy mood, just over tired, mood about the same as it has been all day, only work finishes and there's nothing left to distract him. He's just – he's not feeling up to _talking_ and it's Winnie who gets the brunt of his bad mood because she's there and probably because the sight of her just makes him remember everything he dreamt about in the first place and-

Well anyway. He's snippy and short with her on the way home (which – so stupid, this was his idea in the first place) and then she leaves him standing at the front door, goes into the kitchen and makes herself a sandwich, makes one for him too, leaves it on the counter. She doesn't look at him, just takes her plate into the living room and turns on the tv.

She's watching an episode of a show he's embarrassed to know the name of and he's just _fed up_, doesn't know what the hell is eating him (except he does and it's the dreams, the way he has to feel every time something good happens in his life).

He grudgingly eats the sandwich she made him and then stands in the doorway and glares at the wall.

She doesn't take her eyes off the tv. "Are you going to tell me why you're so upset? Or am I going to have to guess? Cause I'll be honest with you – not really a game I'm that good at."

"I'm just in a bad mood."

"Yeah," she says, around a mouthful of bread, "no kidding."

He glares at her, finds it a little annoying when she just glances at him and then gives him this unimpressed look and turns back to the tv. She ignores him for most of the evening, actually, and he goes and sits in the kitchen with his computer, reads up about bombs he hopes he's never going to have to dismantle, indulges his dark side and looks up land mines (he could probably write a scientific paper on them at this point, keeps all the books he has on them in a box at the back of his coat closet labelled 'Christmas Ornaments').

It is completely and totally beyond irrational to be this worried about people dying day in, day out. But every shift, that's what he worries about, that he's going to fail his team when they need him the most. Has no idea why this is all coming up again, he thought he was done with it when he finished with the shrink after that whole disaster with Sam's sister and her ex-boyfriend, thought that it was getting better. But still, sometimes he thinks about screwing up and then having to explain it to Sophie Lane or Dean Parker, thinks about having to go on living knowing that Sam or Jules lost each other because of his fuck up.

Winnie comes in, gets herself a glass of water and then sets one down on the table in front of him. He stares at it for a second.

She pauses next to him. He can feel the heat from her body. "Um. Do you want me to go home? Cause I can."

He looks up at her, takes in the sight of her standing in his kitchen and sighs. "I. No. I don't."

"Okay."

He watches her walk back to the tv, feels like the decent thing to do would be to just fill her in on the mess that goes on inside his head sometimes (truth is, he's not a talker, not about this kind of stuff. Even with the shrink, he only went because Boss asked him to, would never have voluntarily shared any of it, not with anyone he knows, not with a stranger either).

When they get into bed, he half expects that she's going to turn her back to him (and like, he wouldn't blame her, he really has been acting like an asshole, is actually surprised that she didn't just leave and go home, sound of the front door closing his only clue that he's alone) but she doesn't, just rests her cheek on her palm and looks at him.

"You know. I'm not an idiot. And I may not be SRU but I'm not blind. So. You want to talk about it?"

He stares at the ceiling, thinks about telling her that everyone has bad days, even her (except, he thinks about the months they've been together, how she never gets like that with him, not even when it would be, you know, somehow socially acceptable for a female to be grouchy). "I keep having dreams. About the land mine. Only instead of Lew on it, it's you."

The silence is long and he wonders if he's actually done it, actually made Winnie Camden speechless. "Holy shit."

"It's stupid-"

"It's not stupid," she says softly. "That's-why didn't you say anything?"

"I'm not going to tell you about some dumb _dream_-"

"But you can." She clears her throat. "I'm not…you know, I'm not just here because we have like, crazy good sex, right?" Her voice lilts on the last word, like she's trying her best to make him smile.

It works, just for a second, just a hint. He snorts, doesn't say anything.

She leans over, presses her lips to his skin. He lets out a breath. "I'm sorry that I'm one more thing you have to worry about."

He closes his eyes, leans his head against hers. Feels almost relieved. "It's not like that," he says, has no idea what it actually _is_ like. They fall asleep, her temple against his shoulder and Spike afraid the whole time of some kind of demon he can't even see.

It's not a nightmare this time, not like how it usually is.

It's Spike on the land mine, Lew sitting beside him in a Muskoka chair, shorts and a t-shirt like he's on vacation.

"Hey Spike," he greets him. "Good to see you."

Spike stares at him, knows that it's not possible and that this is a dream but he can't quite- "You're dead, you know."

"Yeah, heard something about that. Kind of a shame."

"Kind of?"

"Okay, a big shame. Not the way I'd have chosen to do things but hey, sometimes you don't get a choice." Lew clears his throat, grins at him. "I knew you had a thing for her. All that crap about her hands. No guy notices a girl's hands. Unless, you know. He's got some pretty big feelings going on."

"Yeah well, big help you turned out to be."

"Had to let you figure it out on your own."

"Oh yeah? That what Leah did?"

"You needed a nudge."

Spike rolls his eyes.

"She's a good girl, you know. Good woman. I always thought that."

"Lew-"

"Spike. Don't screw it up because you're trying to be something you're not. She's not your father."

"Yeah, I know that." He does know that. Knows that he owes Winnie a little more than the light-hearted joking guy. Not that he isn't that, he is. Just. Not a hundred percent of the time. Doesn't know how to explain the times when he's not that guy.

"Okay then. As long as you know. Well. I gotta get going. Get your foot off that thing, will you?"

"Lew, wait-" His eyes snap open and he knows he was having a dream, knows that none of it was real but he also feels a crushing sense of failure when he wakes up (this yearning for bits of his life the way things used to be, nostalgia for a past that slipped away with no warning).

Winnie's hair is spread across the pillow, mass of curls and she's just looking at him. So maybe he doesn't want things to be _exactly_ the way they used to be. He clears his throat, just looks right back at her. He thinks that if he gets up now, gets out of bed and pretends that he needs something downstairs, things are never going to be okay. But if he stays here? If he stays here, lets her slide her arms around his neck and if he kisses her a little, maybe things will be better.

So. He does that. And he tells her that he knows that the Lew in his dream was nothing but his subconscious and Winnie shrugs and says, "Yeah well. So they say. But what the hell do they know?"

And he lets out a weak laugh, pulls her closer to him, thinks maybe he can get some sleep, her fingers laced with his and their heads on the same pillow, the scent of her shampoo in his nose.


	3. The Thinnest Slice

**The Thinnest Slice**

It's possible that Winnie's nervous.

Really nervous.

Like can't sit still, keeps tapping her feet, is shredding the bottom of her scarf, kind of nervous.

Spike keeps glancing at her and then trying to make her laugh and it works – until she stops laughing and then she's right back to being nervous.

(It's just – she was ready before him after shift, knocked on the door to the men's locker room and heard the rest of them telling horror stories about the in-laws. Not that she and Spike are anywhere close to _that_ but her mother's a tough nut to crack and Winnie's suddenly thinking about her high school boyfriend, the one her mother ripped apart because he had an earring and wore a leather jacket, nevermind that he was President of the Chess Club.)

The traffic is bad, all weather-related, people with no snow tires and for once, she's glad to be going bumper-to-bumper, wonders if it's possible to drag this drive out until they have to come back home. She gives him directions once they're off the highway and when they pull into the driveway, she just sits there.

He pauses, hand on the door handle, seatbelt already off. "Um. Are we going in?"

Winnie turns to face him. "Okay look. My mom is like-"

"That's what you're worried about? Stop. Parents _love_ me. And what's not to love, am I right?"

She snorts. "Don't say anything about tattoos. Or motorcycles. Or Jif peanut butter."

"You're freaking out."

She glares at him, opens her mouth to speak and sees a light flick on inside by the front door. "And we've been spotted."

He stares at her. "Win-"

"We'll have to assume that you'll be sleeping in the basement. Maybe I can sneak down to you later. We'll see. It's been a while since I climbed out a window but-"

"You are not _climbing out a window_. Why can't you just use the stairs?" He sounds equal parts amused and horrified.

She shoots him an incredulous look, undoes her seatbelt at the same time. "You don't know my mother," she says darkly.

He grabs both their bags and rolls his eyes at her as they slide their way up the front walk. The door swings open right as they get there.

"Baby!"

"Hey Mom," she says with a grin, leaning forward patiently and letting her mom kiss her on both cheeks before they hug. "I've missed you."

"Let me see you," she says, pushing Winnie back a little. "You look wonderful, Baby, I like your hair that length."

Winnie laughs because her mom has liked her hair every single way she's ever had it her whole life. She glances at Spike and swallows. "Uh. This is-" She has this sudden thought like she should use his real name or like, call him Mike, the way he does when he's talking to people like her neighbour Billy or the barista at Starbucks.

"Spike!" her mom exclaims. "How lovely to finally meet you." She hugs him too, kisses him on the cheek and then rubs her lipstick off of it with her thumb.

Winnie knows she's staring open-mouthed but her mom has barely even liked her previous boyfriends and she certainly never _kissed_ any of them hello.

Spike's smiling and like, Winnie knows that's what he looks like when he smiles but also, every time she sees it, she ends up smiling too (which, actually, totally sucks whenever they argue because she always forgets why she was mad in the first place. Not that she's going to be sharing that information with him).

They follow her mom inside, slip off their shoes and coats and her mom goes, "Are you hungry?" but she's only looking at Spike and the two head into the kitchen together leaving Winnie with her mouth open (again), wondering what in the hell she just witnessed and who body-snatched her mother before they got there. She tags along after them, wonders if the window in her mom's spare room still sticks a bit, if she'll need to throw her own weight against it to get it to open (it's just - it's been a while since the two of them spent a night apart, is all).

Winnie raises her eyebrows at the cookies her mom's serving and like, this is the big leagues right here, Winnie used to help her make those for birthdays and bake sales and they are not _easy_, they take _time._

Her mom keeps asking Spike about himself and his job and whether he likes animals and kids (Winnie closes her eyes briefly – just, her mom is _so_ obvious sometimes) and oh, what a nice area he lives in and look at that Winnie, he doesn't rent, and finally, _finally_, she goes, "Well you must both be tired, why don't I show you where you'll be sleeping?" and the only reason Winnie's relieved is so that her mom will stop talking about children and babies and Spike having so much extra space in his house.

Except then, she's confused as all hell because her mom leads them both upstairs and opens the door to the spare bedroom. Winnie just stands in the doorway stupidly, even after her mom kisses her goodnight, waves at Spike and then goes into her own room.

"What are you doing?" he asks her, putting their bags down and then dropping onto the bed, looks like he wants to laugh but is trying to be polite.

"What do you think's going on?" she hisses. "I'm telling you right now, I have no idea who that woman was!"

He shrugs at her, grinning like he'd like to laugh in her face but isn't going to. "I think she's great. No idea why you were so worried."

"I wasn't _worried_," she mutters, even though she was totally worried. "I just – she didn't let me have a boy in my room until I was twenty-one! And I didn't even _live_ with her anymore!"

He snorts.

"And what was all that stuff about offering you a hundred cookies and what a nice neighbourhood you live in? Honestly, sometimes she acts like I'm living in, I don't even know where! Malvern, maybe."

"Nothing wrong with Malvern."

She rolls her eyes at him. "Please. You know what I mean!"

He laughs. "Are you going to come over here or am I going to have to come and get you?"

She closes the door, leans against it with her hands on the knob. "You don't find this the slightest bit weird?"

He lets out a sigh. "You want to know what I found weird?" He grins at her. "Your no-cops rule."

She glares at him. "Okay, bring up my one stupid moment all over again, why don't you?" she mutters. "That's a good rule!"

"Yeah? How'd it work out for you?"

"I hate you."

"You really don't. Now come here."

She crosses the room reluctantly, still prepared to defend a rule that she thought she would be following until her dying day and then almost lets out a shriek when he grabs her and pulls her onto the bed, twisting her in mid-air so that she lands on her back. "My mom is right next door," she hisses through her giggles, tries to ignore how he's leaning over her grinning. "She's going to hear the bed-"

He drops his head onto her shoulder and laughs. "What? Squeak? What _will_ she think we're doing in here?" He bounces a little bit.

"Stop it."

He grins at her, bounces a little bit more.

"Spike, I swear to God-"

"Yeah? What are you going to do?"

She leans up and kisses him hard on the mouth, arches up against him until he drops all the joking and kisses her back properly, hands warm against her skin. "You're going to have to wait till we get back home."

He shoots her a confused look. "Okay. Why?"

She grins up at him, settles her arms underneath her head. "We aren't doing it in my mother's house when she's right next door."

"Why-"

"Because," she interrupts, "I don't remember the last time we were quiet. And I'd like to not have to discuss it tomorrow morning over breakfast."

He laughs, leans down and kisses her nose and then bounces on the bed one last time, climbs off and starts rooting around in his overnight bag. "Okay okay. You'd better be sleeping in a muumuu then."

She quirks an eyebrow at him, knows exactly what he thinks about the things she sometimes sleeps in (it's just – he is _appreciative _of the effort she makes, is all). "Keep that up and I'll be sleeping naked."

His head whips up and he narrows his eyes at her. "Tease."

She shrugs. "You've got your definitions backwards. A tease is someone who doesn't follow through. You should probably try to remember that."

He laughs, shakes his head at her. "You are serious trouble. I think my Ma warned me about girls like you." Only he says it affectionately, like he's happy about it.

She sleeps in the next morning, vaguely aware of Spike getting up, pressing his lips against hers before he slips out of the room.

It's way past ten when she finally hauls herself up, washes her face and brushes her teeth, thinks her hair probably needs to be cut, nevermind what her mother said, wriggles into jeans and a t-shirt. She's still yawning when she walks through the door of the kitchen and then she stops abruptly because Spike and her mom are chopping vegetables together at the counter, two coffee mugs half full in front of two seats at the table. The talking halts and they both just look at her.

"Good morning, Baby," her mom says brightly. "Your lovely young man was just helping me with lunch."

Winnie thinks she gurgles out something nonsensical, it's just, she needs coffee, her mom's been replaced by an _alien_ and the sun shining through the kitchen window is too bright. Also - her 'lovely young man'?

"Coffee's in the pot," Spike says and she just stares at him because what in the hell, even.

They return to their conversation, not so much as glancing at her and after a minute, she shuffles over to the coffee pot, pours herself an outrageous amount, leans against the counter and watches this totally absurd scene that's unfolding in her mom's kitchen (and like, _who_ is her mother right now, practically cooing at Spike, telling him isn't he a lovely help in the kitchen, does he want to take a seat and have some more coffee, isn't it _so_ nice to finally meet him - like seriously, Winnie doesn't even know) as she sips at it.

"Did you sleep well?" Her mother asks her.

"Um. Yeah. Uh. Did you?"

Her mom starts talking about how she likes to get up early, be productive before work, enjoy her toast with the paper and Winnie slides into one of the kitchen chairs, her eyes fixed on the two piles of vegetables on the counter.

Spike glances at her and snickers, drops a kiss on her forehead before he turns back to the counter top. Her mother practically beams at her and Winnie finds herself smiling back.

It's just - she has to admit, it's kind of nice drinking coffee in her mom's kitchen with the sun shining through the window, hearing the laughter of the two people she loves the most.


	4. Let The Wind Blow Back Your Hair

**Let The Wind Blow Back Your Hair**

He brings up the question one night (at least, he attempts to start sowing the seeds) when he's sitting on her bed waiting for her to find these shoes she insisted the whole way over here were _definitely_ in her closet. There's a thin layer of dust over just about everything in her apartment and like, okay, thinking about this logically is what he's been doing for the past three and a half weeks and he thinks he's got some good examples on that front, thinks he might actually be able to convince her that it's not too soon.

"How long have you lived here again?"

She ducks her head out to look at him and good God, she's got a lot of clothes. He's almost in awe, leaning tower of denim and a thousand pairs of shoes. "Uh. Six years I think? Dunno. Can't remember." She laughs, disappears back into her clothes and her voice is muffled when she says, "Pretty sure I signed the lease drunk. But. I was young and stupid. You know, so whatever."

He clears his throat. "You ever think about moving? You're kind of far from work all the way out here." That's it, start it off casual, don't just spring it on her.

"Uh. Couple times. But the rent's awesome."

"Yeah," he mutters to himself, "that's because you're out in the middle of nowhere." He raises his voice. "I'm pretty sure there was a drug bust down the street last week."

She laughs, still inside the closet. "Oh stop. It's not that bad. Ha! Told you they were here!" She sits on the ground and does them up, these complicated straps he doesn't think he could follow even if he had a map. Sticks her foot out in the air. "What do you think?"

What does he think? He thinks that she's in a dress sitting on the floor with one long leg in the air. He thinks he can almost see her underwear and actually, what in the hell do they have to go anywhere for again?

"Okay. We can go now!"

He makes a face at her, thinks she's just so cute when she makes the same face back at him. "Oh well, as long as _you're_ ready."

She talks to him about how her shoes are already hurting her feet and she has no idea how she's going to walk all the way there in them but aren't they so pretty and like, he's just gone silent, nodding at her every now and then but basically, he's thinking that she should leave the shoes on and-

"Are you coming or what? And you huffed and puffed all the way over here saying we'd be late!" She laughs at him.

And the thing is, they're already late, or at least they will be and he's just-he's hideously unconcerned.

They get in a cab though. He doesn't want her falling and breaking her neck or a kneecap or anything.

She holds onto his arm as they walk in, snickers and tells him that she's totally out of practice walking in heels, has gotten way too used to those regulation boots and then she kisses his cheek, heads over to where a bunch of women are crowded around a table. He watches her, a little dazed as she and Jules hug each other.

"What's eating you?" Sophie Lane is standing right at his elbow and he almost jumps, didn't even notice her.

"Hi," he says, leans over to kiss her on the cheek. "How's it going? You look nice. Ed here?"

"Left him at home with Izzy," she says with a grin. "No, no. He's around. I'm pretty sure he's telling Sam all about the joys of the birthing experience."

He thinks he makes a face at that one (look, he remembers grade nine Science class as well as the next person but he was always caught up in Chemistry and Physics, thinks they could have skipped Bio all together, especially _that_ video).

"Wow. That girlfriend of yours has some seriously sexy shoes," she says admiringly.

He thinks he makes another face at that because yes, yes she does and also, really good legs. And she's funny and pretty and half the time, he has no idea how on earth he convinced her to ever go out with him. Winnie catches his eye, raises her eyebrow at him from across the room. It is beyond stupid for him to be like turning _red_ but he is. Sophie totally catches it, very nicely doesn't say anything. Sam and Ed would have never let him forget it.

He gets a drink, says hi, gets pulled into a conversation by Jules' youngest brother. Sam's parents are kicking around, so's his sister (he sees her whispering something in Winnie's ear, his girlfriend laughing, head tipped back and he wonders what in the hell Nat could be saying to her) and like Jules' dad and two of her brothers, Raf and his girlfriend and he sees Wordy and Ed laughing next to the bar and it's just-it's a lot.

He half wonders if he's supposed to do something tonight, best man and all of that shit but when Sam asked him it was all, "Just hold the ring, stand there, you don't have to do anything else, I swear." So. He'd said yes. Now wonders if maybe Sam missed a few details. (Winnie's been asking him about his speech, which is pretty much non-existent at this point in time.)

Plus he can't help but look around and miss Lew. Which. The guy's been dead for years, hundreds of Team events since then, and also, he feels like an asshole, being kind of melancholy at something that should be so happy. You'd think he'd learn to get over it a little but-

Just one of those things.

He slips outside for some air, thinks it might have been a good idea to take Winnie's suggestion and not wear a tie, balls it up in his pocket, unbuttons the top button of his dress shirt. Sighs.

"You okay out here?" Sam closes the door behind him, hands him another beer, takes a pull of his own.

"Just. Yes. Fine. You?"

He makes a face. "I think this whole thing is stupid," he says, which - not news, he's been saying that since his mother first suggested it. "What's even the point of an engagement party, we're getting married in two weeks, why not just have one thing?" He doesn't say that in just over two weeks, they're also going to have a kid running around (that's Jules though, not giving a shit if she's wearing white and set to give birth the week after).

Spike laughs, nods sympathetically.

"You still okay to hold the ring, right?"

He rolls his eyes. "Yes. I just have to stand there, hold the ring, hand it to you. I think I've got it covered."

Sam scratches at the back of his neck and clears his throat. "Yeah well. I think you might have to say something at the reception. Sorry."

Spike rolls his eyes again. "I knew it." Shakes his head dramatically. But. It's not really that big a deal. Plus, Winnie can help him write it, she's good with words. He clears his throat. "So. Everything going well with the new Team One soon-to-be baby?"

"Everything seems fine," Sam confirms. "I don't know, it's stupid to be so excited, it's not going to be able to do anything but sleep and cry for the first two years but. A kid. Married. Crazy."

Spike wants to ask him how they _knew_, like how could you ever know you want one person every minute for the rest of your life? It just - it seems like a lot of minutes to account for, is all he's saying.

Sam's looking at him. "You okay?"

He spends a good thirty seconds clearing his throat and then just says, "Yeah. Fine."

Sam looks like he's going to say something else but Winnie ducks her head out, calls their names from the door. "Planning to run off together?" she says with a grin.

Sam laughs but Spike just stares at her, how there's a piece of hair falling in her face and how when she smiles, her eyes do too, thinks she's just the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, all those good genes and how amazing she is, that look on her face like she sees everything, misses the next thing she says but Sam laughs, claps him on the shoulder and then heads inside. Winnie comes to stand with him, gives him a concerned look. "You okay?"

"Yeah. I'm good."

She crosses her arms and like, she's in a dress with these tiny little straps, shoulders almost bare and it's just a little chilly so he slides his hands up over her skin, tries to get her warm, tries to ignore how soft her skin feels.

"We should go back inside," he says. "It's cold out here."

She just looks at him steadily. "Not if you're not okay."

"I'm okay," he says. "Just. Thinking."

"Lew?" she guesses and like, back before they were dating, he used to wonder if she could read his mind, those shrewd guesses that always seemed to be right (used to freak him out a bit, actually, until Jules pointed out one afternoon that no one could _actually_ read minds, that was all in the movies which – he knew that).

He shrugs at her and she leans forward and kisses him, slides her arms around his neck and doesn't say anything else. He hugs her back, likes the warmth of her in his arms.

"Back to what we were talking about earlier," he says when they're both standing behind the closed door, inside just a shade too warm now.

"Hm?"

"Maybe you should just move in with me."

She stops dead, foot in the air mid-step and her face whipped around to face him.

She doesn't look horrified though so he takes that as a positive sign. "What do you think?"

"I-what? When were we-_what_?"

He clears his throat. "You want the logical answer or the one that makes sense?"

She raises her eyebrows. "Why don't you give me the logical one first."

He nods slowly. "Okay well. There's the obvious. You're over all the time. Paying rent for a place you're never at seems like a waste. We'd save gas probably. No more paying two sets of electrical bills. Or water bills. Or internet bills. We could get good cable. You know. With the movie channels. Um. And we can double up on groceries."

She looks deep in thought for a moment. "Okay. And the other one?"

He shrugs. "Uh. I want you there?" He doesn't have quite so many examples for the other one.

She stares at him for a second and he wonders if he should have just stuck with the logical arguments, wonders if maybe it's just him that the other argument makes the most sense to. "Is this just because Sam and Jules-"

"It isn't," he interrupts her, knew she'd think he was getting caught up in you know, weddings and babies (she's just-she's said some stuff about how people do things on this stupid schedule and he knows what he means, he does but. It's not like that).

"Okay then."

"Okay then what?"

She huffs a little, like _duh_, what does he think she means but there's no way he's going to assume this (he has twice before, assumed things, and both times, it ended with her glaring at him across his kitchen table so. Not going to make that mistake again). "Okay then, yes. We should move in together."

She sounds so matter-of-fact that he nearly laughs. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I just. You know. Hope all my stuff fits."

"Talking about your shoes?" he says, feels like he's grinning at her. "Those might be a problem."

"The shoes come or I don't," she threatens but she's smiling, looking at him with this soft expression on her face.

He sighs like it's some kind of scourge he's going to have to bear, thinks maybe they can extend the closet into the wall a little. "I guess if those are my choices..."

She leans up and kisses him though and she's soft and warm in his arms and really, he's wondering if anyone will miss them if they leave right now.

"We've already got one kid on the way, let's not try to double it up," comes a familiar voice. Nat Braddock's standing in the doorway grinning at the two of them.

Winnie laughs, looks at him with her cheeks turning pink and he leans over, presses his lips to hers and they walk back into the room together, fingers intertwined.


	5. If Love Remains

AN: I realize I said fluff - and it is. If you squint and tilt your head to the side a little.

In other news, I get that we're gearing up for a finale here but that's a game that I'm flat out refusing to play. You don't want to play either? Come tweet at me, we'll make our own little universe where this show NEVER ENDS.

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**If Love Remains**

This is not like the first time they've been to a funeral together (which, if Winnie thinks about it, is actually really fucking depressing). All of Team One, Commander Holleran and her went to Lew's funeral (she sat diagonally behind Spike, could see the back of his head every time she breathed, remembers laying her hand on his back at one point and Boss gave a speech that made everything in her stomach hurt), Team One and her to Mac's and to Spike's dad's - but this is the first time since they've been together, that she's sat beside him and he's clutched tightly to her hand.

She stares straight ahead, squeezes Spike's fingers (they're really laying it on thick, the people speaking, she has to bite at the inside of her cheek to stop the tears).

Tries not to think about the stats on cop deaths (it's part of the reason why-well, whatever. That ship sailed a long time ago, there's no other choice for her now, nevermind that it's barely even been four months).

She doesn't say a word to the guy's widow, reaches out and accepts her hug but doesn't dare say that he's in a better place or that time heals everything (Winnie remembers people saying that when her Dad died, her Mom in black, face white, accepting the shit people were saying and then crying alone in her room with the badge because that's all that was left, Winnie on the other side of the door with her knees pulled up into her chest). She's thinking about death, how it can bring you together or drive you apart and there's this tiny part of her that's scared it's going to be the latter for them, that he's going to look at her and just, she doesn't even know what.

End it, maybe.

She's thinking about all the things she can say to convince him not to (she's got as far as, 'I'm not leaving').

Which is selfish as all shit to be thinking about when this woman (Diane, Winnie reminds herself, _Diane_) is burying her husband, Winnie knows that. She can't help it though, keeps putting herself in Diane's shoes and then shying away from what she sees.

They're standing in Diane's kitchen, Spike outside with some of the other cops (all of them rookies together, all around the same age, Winnie's heart in her throat whenever she glances out the window at him. Because it could have been him. On a daily basis, it still could be). She's never understood why it's a thing to do to have people back to your house after a funeral, like when you haven't slept in days and people don't know what to say so they're saying the dumbest shit, trying to show you that they're there for you. In any case, she thinks that if it were her, she'd just get in her car and drive until she ran out of gas.

Diane's kind of sticking to her side and Winnie's only met her twice, they don't even really _know_ each other but she thinks if her presence is giving the other woman something she can't seem to find anywhere else, she'll stand here as long as she's needed. Diane looks at her, eyes old, set in a hopelessly young face. "I never thought it would actually happen. I thought it would be someone else's husband, if it had to be anyone's."

Winnie doesn't say anything, just looks at her.

"How do you stand it? On those calls with him, knowing that you could hear-"

"I'd rather it was me hearing it than someone else." She's trying to say that at least this way, she'll know that someone did everything they could to bring her teams home, to their wives and their husbands and their brothers and their sisters. To their kids. That at least this way, she'll know the full story, start to finish.

Except, then she thinks about Lew, wonders if the full story is really something anyone should ever know.

Diane sighs. "It was worth it. Even if I'd known…well, it was worth it." She sounds regretful. And Winnie knows it's not the same, wouldn't be the same if it was her walking around with the old eyes, but she thinks about how she'd feel about all the time she wasted. Knows she'd be grateful for the time she got, she really would be.

But, she also thinks that all the time in the world with Spike would probably never be enough for her.

Diane gets pulled away by her sister and Winnie looks at the pictures on the walls, thinks that this is the kind of house you'd buy if you wanted to raise kids in it.

Spike steps inside and their eyes meet and she has no idea what expression she's wearing but she sees all this relief on his face when he looks at her, like maybe he thought he'd walk in here and she'd be gone. He walks up to her and stands real close, slides his hand over her hip.

"Can we go?" he asks softly, voice low and she nods immediately, turns to look at him.

"Whenever you're ready."

She stands next to him as he says goodbye and she doesn't blame the rest of Team One for not lingering at this part, for going home to their families instead (it's just – she went with her family too, even if it's nowhere near the kind of thing they've promised each other).

Winnie drives them home, Spike sitting next to her staring out the window. He doesn't say anything and she doesn't push at him.

"Think I'm going to lie down," he says when they get inside, even though it's the middle of the afternoon and still sunny.

She wants to ask him what she can do, how she can make this better, how she can help him smile but she knows that there's nothing at all that's going to make it better. She just swallows, nods at him. He stares at her for a second and then leans forward, kisses her forehead and then her lips, his hand warm on the side of her neck. Her eyelids flutter closed just for a second.

She wanders around the first floor, washes some dishes and straightens up the couch cushions, looks out the window and fiddles with the books in his office (she doesn't fiddle too much though, he's got his own weird filing system that she doesn't understand and she doesn't want to be the reason he can't find anything), removes a half full coffee cup from where it's sitting on the window sill. She bakes a cake, makes the house smell the way she remembers her mom's house smelling when she was a kid, puts it on the counter to cool and just stares at it (it took her mom three years to bake that cake again. It's the one they had the night before her dad walked out the front door and never walked back in again, Winnie remembers that much).

She cleans up everything, wipes the flour off the counter and puts the mixing bowl back where she found it.

She heads up the stairs quietly, pushes open the bedroom door and just stares at Spike's back, lines of muscle only just visible over the corner of the sheet. She slips out of her black dress, out of her sheer tights and then sits on the edge of the bed in her underwear. He turns his head and just looks at her. She freezes for a second, didn't know he was awake.

"Can I lie down?" she asks.

"Been waiting for you," he says, lifts the covers up so she can slide in beside him, wraps his arms around her. He's pressing kisses into her hair, against her neck, and she's clutching at him, wants to tell him that she loves him, loves him a crazy amount, an amount she can't even really comprehend, never understood that this was waiting out there for her, that she can't believe how many years they wasted, that if she had to trade in _coffee_ tomorrow to be with him, she'd do it, wouldn't even think twice.

It's comfort, even when he kisses her and she slides one leg over his hips, straddles him and he laces their fingers together, it's not like it usually is, slower and more gentle and everything carrying this weird weight with it. He stares into her eyes the whole time and she tries to show him that she's not going anywhere, that she's going to be here with him until something drags her away kicking and screaming, like it'll never be her choice to go.

They fall asleep holding hands and when she wakes up, it's dark outside and Spike is still sleeping beside her and their fingers are still laced together. She thinks that he's got to be hungry, or at least he will be when he wakes up, and she slides out of the bed silently, tucks the blankets back around him, pulls on one of his shirts. She stares at him for a few minutes though, just standing in the doorway, thinks that she would really like to stop him from doing his job, keep him safe forever. Make sure he never leaves her.

Which like, what the hell.

She doesn't know when it started feeling this serious between them. If she's honest though (and she hates being honest with herself), it's part of the reason she turned him down at first, knowing all the ways that it would be between them, never easy, never casual (and how she never wanted to be like her mother, crying alone for a husband who was never coming home and having to find the strength to claw her way back up into life).

She makes pasta, the way his Ma does (his Ma calls for her sometimes, Spike handing the phone over with this expression on his face like he can't believe what he's witnessing but he likes it. The first time, Winnie had no idea that he'd told his Ma everything about them but then she was getting an introduction to Italian cooking over the phone and afterwards, she kind of figured that it meant she'd been accepted.

Her mom loves Spike, Winnie half thinks the woman wants to trade her in and keep her boyfriend).

She feels eyes on her, glances back from where she's hunting in the fridge for the proper cheese, none of that pre-grated stuff because she takes what his Ma says pretty seriously when it comes to food. "Hey."

He smiles at her, t-shirt and SRU sweats, yawns, scratches at the back of his head, hair all wild. She smiles. It's just - it's a good look for him and she wonders if she'll ever look at him and not be glad that she's the one he comes home to. "How long did I sleep for?"

She shrugs. "Dunno. Figured I'd get dinner started."

He stares at her for a second and then shakes his head. "Thanks. For coming with me today."

She rolls her eyes playfully. "Where else was I gonna be?"

Except he doesn't respond to her playfulness at all, doesn't even smile, just keeps looking at her seriously.

"What?"

He still doesn't say anything.

She clears her throat. "Spike-"

"You realize that several of the people I've loved are dead, right?"

She thinks she sees black spots at the edge of her vision. "I-"

"And that, by the way the odds have been going," he snorts, "I'm probably going to be the last man standing."

She closes the fridge, leans against it, crosses her arms and then realizes it looks defensive and forces herself to stop. "What are you saying?"

He just looks at her and for a second, she thinks maybe he might cry. Or she will. "Just that."

She doesn't know what to say back, doesn't know what point he's trying to make, is trying to stop her heart from like cracking here (she doesn't want him to be the last man standing, doesn't want to have to be the one to watch him go either and she wonders what in the hell they're going to do about that, about the fact that the outcome of his job is never going to have a guarantee. Then she thinks that guarantees don't matter, that nothing at all in this life has a guarantee except blenders, that she's all in here, for however long they get. Wonders how she's ever going to go back if he ends this, after having had only a glimpse of what her life could be about, she just never wants to go back).

"I just." He sighs. "I don't know. If I get to keep the people that I love."

It takes her longer than she'd like for her to process that one and it's not like she doesn't _know_, not like they haven't said it before and all the ways he shows it but she kind of thinks this is different. Kind of feels like they're balancing on knifepoint here, that it's going to be one way or the other and that either way, there'll be no looking back, not today and not tomorrow either. Thinks that if she has to go to a hundred more funerals with him, she'll do it, will do all the hard stuff so he doesn't have to, all that hugging and the sending flowers and the bits that other people need.

"Only way I'm leaving is if I can't help it," she says. Realizes a second later that that's the exact opposite of reassuring.

He seems to take it the way she wanted him to though, face relaxing just a little. "I don't want you to be one of those things that I lose."

She doesn't say anything, doesn't even breathe.

"Just so-when I want to come and pick you up from work at three in the morning because you pulled some OT and I didn't, just indulge me, okay?" There's a hint of a smile and if she didn't know him so well, she'd never have seen it. It makes something in her relax, makes her smile just a little too, the way she always does when she looks at him and he's smiling.

She thinks about how if she goes out with her girlfriends, he insists on picking her up so that she doesn't take a cab or the TTC alone, how if a light bulb blows, he likes to climb up the ladder and change it himself and how she's always rolled her eyes and chalked it up to this weird over-protective streak he has, one of those surprises she never knew about before. Wonders if it's not really that at all, how he kisses her after a bad shift, desperate and deep and like he never wants to stop. "Goes both ways."

He smiles at her and it's like things are suddenly settled between them and she feels relief course through her, jagged and bright, blood rushing to the tips of her fingers. "So. Dinner."

She raises an eyebrow, smiles tremulously up at him. "And cake. And if there's one thing that always comes out right, it's this cake."

He steps forward, right into her space and kisses her. "Love you."

"Love you back," she says against his mouth, reaches up and hugs him hard before clearing her throat and turning back to the fridge. "I'm just looking for the cheese-"

He turns her back to face him, hands on her waist. "Um. Just so we're clear. Only way I'm leaving you is if I can't help it."

She swallows hard and then slides her arms up around his neck and he presses kisses against her hair and they stand that way for a while, right in the middle of the kitchen, just the two of them.


	6. Something To Rely On

**Something To Rely On**

Without fail, Winnie gets sick every single winter; it's never the flu and no one else she knows gets sick at the same time (her mother says it's all in her head which - Winnie kind of wishes it were, then she wouldn't have to spend a week feeling like she's going to hack up a lung at her desk or suffocate whenever she lies down on her couch).

Spike drops a box of tissues at her desk, some of those little candy hearts she likes (okay so they're not going to do much for her sore throat but they're so good, she can almost see the positives of having to be at work today).

"Feeling any better?"

She groans. "I think I've moved right through to feeling like death. So. Is that up or down from yesterday?"

He laughs. "Poor baby."

"Oh shut up," she mutters, glares mutinously at the fact that his nose is not at all as red or raw as hers feels. She turns her face and coughs into her shoulder, looks back up at him with watery eyes. "I hate everything." Of course, it comes out sounding more like "I hayd everythig" which just makes her pout at him even more.

He smiles at her though, looks like he wants to lean over the desk and kiss her anyway (it's just - she's gotten familiar with the way he looks at her. There's the one that says, 'Oh Winnie, you're so ridiculous' that gets directed at her when she decides she wants Betty Crocker chocolate frosting at midnight and the one that says, 'Let's not go out, let's stay here' if he happens to catch her in her underwear before she's fully dressed and the one that says, 'I find you annoying but I like you anyway,' that he gets on his face when they're arguing over what movie to watch. Point is, he doesn't hide them from her and she's learning to read them).

"Hey Winnie - how are you feeling?" Leah sounds sympathetic.

Winnie makes a face. "The same. Or you know, worse."

"You'll have to get your boyfriend to take care of you later."

Spike rolls his eyes. "Don't you have somewhere else to be?"

"The truck. But you have the keys."

He stares up at the ceiling. "See you later, Win. Try not to cough up your stomach. Leah?"

Leah flashes her a smile, follows him out to the garage.

By the time shift is over, Winnie feels like her head is going to explode and breathing? Yeah, who needs to breathe. She's miserable and cold (has her coat draped over her legs and an extra pair of socks on inside her boots) and she would really like a shower and something hot to drink.

She's never been so glad to see Sid in her life, gets to her feet slowly and tries not to aggravate the throbbing in her head.

"Jesus - why did you even come in today?"

She sighs heavily. "Thanks. Appreciate that one. Have a good night."

"Feel better! Also, check this out – Costco-sized Purell. Awesome, right?"

She wants to flash him the finger but the thought of turning around and making the effort – it's just not worth it. As it is, it takes her twice as long to get dressed as it usually does and she is beyond glad that she's off tomorrow, is looking forward to a full day spent in bed.

And tea. Lots of tea.

She opens the locker room door and nearly crashes right into Spike, his hand raised like he's about to knock. She jumps and then laughs at herself. "Sorry."

He looks at her, concern all over his face. "Come on, I'm taking you home."

She leans against him gratefully, thinks that maybe she can skip the hot drink if he decides to keep her warm instead. He drops a kiss on her hair.

Winnie falls asleep in the car, heating jacked up to shit, huddled way down into her hat and scarf and Spike pulling off his own coat to lay over her at a red light. He shakes her gently when the car stops and she moans, tries to push his hand away.

She hears a breath of laughter and then, "You can get up or I can carry you - but if I do, I don't want to hear you whine about it for the next year and a half."

She huffs, forces her eyes to open. "You picked me up and carried me over a puddle. At Sam's birthday! In front of everyone!"

He smiles patiently at her. "Whatever you say. So? Inside?"

She gets out of the car and then pauses because they're at his place and, it's not like she doesn't like it (actually, she does, he's got way better furniture than she does and his walls aren't a ghastly shade of mustard and, you know, he's there, so.) but she's just a little confused because who wants a mass of sniffling, coughing girlfriend next to them? No boyfriend she's ever had. Not that there've been a hundred or anything but you know, there've been a few. Not that they lasted. Obviously. (Maybe because they never wanted to hang out with her when she was sick.)

"What are you doing?" he asks, looking back at her. Raises his eyebrow, gives her this patient little smile. "Do you need to go to the hospital?"

She snorts, strides up to him so fast it makes her head spin a little. "Don't even. Sorry, I just thought you were taking me home."

He gives her this look like he's finding her this hopeless combination of slow and adorable. "How am I supposed to take care of you over there? Your heat doesn't even work properly."

Which - he has a point. It's a little intermittent, but like, radiators from the fifties are temperamental, she's just learned to deal with it. Also, take care of her? She hasn't had enough experience with people to know what exactly that entails.

"Are you hungry?" He must see the answering look on her face because he rolls his eyes. "Okay well, you have to eat. I'll make you soup."

"I don't-"

"-like chicken noodle. Yeah, I know."

She laughs, wonders what exactly she did right for him to just turn around one day and ask her out, pulls herself closer to him. "I'd really like to kiss you right now but I don't think you want the plague. Okay if I take a shower?"

He snorts, leans down and kisses her anyway, hands on either side of her jaw (actually, who cares about the shower because all she wants right now can be found right in front of her and underneath his clothes). "I figured you would. I'll come get you after."

And like, that makes no sense, he has no idea how long she's going to take but apparently, even though she's sick, she is still thinking suggestive things (just, you know, towel, bathroom counter, easy access, all of that).

She lets the shower heat up until the whole bathroom's steamy and then she steps inside and lets out a groan of pleasure. Her toes are still cold and she half wants to sit down right in the tub with the water thundering down over her head. Figures if she does, she'll never get out. She takes ages, water starting to run cold and she squeezes all the water out of her hair before snagging one of the huge towels from the shelf under the sink (they had a _discussion _over towels once, Spike saying what did you need huge towels for and Winnie saying that hello, she couldn't just wrap a dishtowel around her waist and call it a day _like some people_ but whatever, fine, not the end of the world - a week later, she found the bath sheets under the sink). She sits on the counter for a bit, doesn't really want to leave the steam just to step into a chilly room but eventually, makes a run for it, pauses and then decides that getting under the blankets sounds completely genius.

When Spike comes up to find her, she's snuggled down on his side of the bed, damp hair leaving marks on the pillow case. He pauses just inside the door. "What are you doing?"

"Relaxing," she says in bliss, first time all day she's actually been comfortable and warm.

She hears him laughing and when she opens her eyes, he's kneeling on the ground next to her, one knee like he's still at work and her idle thought is that he can try talking her down _anytime he feels like it_. And by talking her down, she means- "You want to try eating something?"

She wrinkles her nose but then thinks that he made the effort to make something for her, the least she can do is open her mouth. "Yeah. Okay. I'll get up."

He shakes his head still smiling at her. "I'll bring it to you. You want anything else?"

"A shirt?" she says with a hopeful grin, snickers at the way his eyes kind of widen at her, how he pulls up the edge of the blanket and peeks underneath it.

"Nice."

She laughs, sits up a little as he grabs a clean t-shirt from his chest of drawers.

"Need help?"

She smiles. "Definitely," she drawls. Except then he sits on the edge of the bed and literally helps her put it on. She pouts at him.

"You know you're sick, right? Headache? Fever? Chills?"

"Maybe it'll help me," she suggests because really, yes, she doesn't feel that good but like she also would really not complain if he was pressed up against her kissing her neck. Or you know, whatever.

He laughs but she sees how his fingers tighten on the blankets for a second and it's good to know that she's not the only one feeling torn here. "I'm going to go get your food. Don't go anywhere."

She shrugs at him, thinks his bed under his blankets is pretty perfect, could only get better if he was under them with her so why would she bother going anywhere else, ever? She's leaning back against the pillows thinking that she might actually fall asleep now when he comes back in holding a tray and it's not like she doesn't know he's probably the greatest boyfriend out there but every time she gets confronted by it, her whole heart just-

"Need me to feed you?"

She is like, ninety-six percent sure he's kidding. "Hilarious," she says dryly. He snickers childishly, sits next to her as she eats and ugh, okay, really? A guy who knows how to cook, who cares about her, you know, needs, who wants to make her laugh and who she just finds so incredibly like, hot- "How were you ever single?" she demands.

"What?" He's giving her one of those looks that says, 'I don't follow your logic at all, whatsoever but I still want to kiss you'.

"I don't want to give you a big head but. You know. Awesome guys are usually taken." They _are_. Winnie has a ton of girlfriends who keep asking her how she found someone _like him_ who wasn't already attached, like she went and broke some big rule. And she always laughs and shakes her head but part of her thinks that sometimes, girls overlook the nice guy who can make them laugh in favour of the guy who treats them like shit (bottom line here, Spike's always been able to make her crack up, started her very first hour at SRU and hasn't stopped since).

"Ahh, did you find out about the wife and two kids I'm hiding in the basement?"

"Oh ha ha, fu-nny."

He just smiles at her, sweeps some strands of damp hair out of her face and chats to her about nothing while she finishes eating and then gets up to take the tray back downstairs. She slides down in the bed, thinks she feels about a billion times better than she did six hours ago, her brain telling her it's the shower and the rest and the soup and the rest of her insisting that it's just _him_.

She wonders if she really needs to get up and brush her teeth, wonders if she can just like, chew some gum and call it a day. Groans and then pushes the blankets back, swings her legs around. The toothbrush she has at his place is a lurid shade of green and she thinks of YTV and slime every single time she uses it. Also, it's kind of convenient that she has all her stuff in here (she used to leave it all in this sorry-looking camouflage-print bag, her make up and her toothbrush, would set it on top of the sink and then one day she walked into his bathroom and he'd unpacked the whole thing, right down to her tampons and eye cream).

She pulls herself back over to the bed, gets situated under the blankets and sighs at the effort she just expended. She can hear Spike's voice from downstairs, Italian lilting up and down, probably his mother, she thinks dimly.

Her eyes only open when Spike places a mug and a glass of water on the nightstand. "You need liquids."

She makes a face, closes her eyes again. "No please."

"That's what my Ma said. So. Up."

"What is this?" she asks, sniffing at the mug like she'll regain her sense of smell any second now.

"Hot water. With lemon and honey. I have no idea if that's even going to taste good but it's supposed to help your throat."

She stares at him. "I'm never going to be able to repay this, am I?" she muses. "You never get sick."

He rolls his eyes. "Oh, I'm sure we can work something out," he says, leers at her and she laughs so hard she nearly chokes.

She downs the glass of water and half the strange concoction while he sits on the edge of the bed smiling at her, telling her about how his cousin just had a baby and everyone thinks it looks like Abe Lincoln but no one wants to be the one to tell her. He gets ready for bed too, disappearing into the bathroom and she pulls the blankets up over her head, thinks that there's really no better place to be in the whole entire world.

He leans down over her when he comes back out, brushes her cheekbone with his thumb. "Need anything else?"

Which, like, loaded question because yes, yes she does, thanks for asking. She tugs at him until he's half lying on top of her, tugs some more so that she has more of his weight and the whole time, he just gazes at her, this small smile on his face. He kisses her, just a little, slow and soft and she thinks that really, sick or not, life doesn't get any better than this.


	7. I'll Give You A Four Leaf Clover

AN: If there were tags for these little one-shots, this one's would be "Because sometimes, guys are just as stupid as girls are" - everyone's entitled to a stupid moment, right?

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**I'll Give You A Four Leaf Clover**

She doesn't fight fair, never has, slams both hands down on the table and glares at him over it, eyes flashing and a scowl all over that face – and he gets a little lost in her, so yeah, it's not fair.

Which, okay, he doesn't really fight fair either, although it's not at all the same, thinks he just made a pretty cutting remark about women being irrational (which - bad idea, she looks like she wants to throw something at him) but still, Winnie's usually level-headed and he has zero idea why she's fighting him so hard on this, drags himself back to the conversation with difficulty.

"I don't understand what you don't understand!"

He rolls his eyes (which is probably another bad idea, she might _actually_ throw something at him and Winnie Camden has unerring aim). "There's nothing to understand! You're _jealous_-"

She snorts rudely. "That is one thing I'm _not_. What, you like the attention?"

She's really starting to get on his nerves now. "There _is_ no attention, she isn't trying to-"

"I know girls, Spike. Probably better than you do, since I've been one my whole life. And I'm telling you, she's trying to get into your pants! And you're encouraging it!"

"Of course I'm not encouraging it!" The idea is so ludicrous, so completely absurd to him that he almost laughs. It's just – what does he care about some rookie cop Team One worked with several weeks ago, he has a girlfriend (one he's very happy with actually, the past fifteen minutes notwithstanding) and there's no _way_ he's encouraging some other girl. Even if she does laugh at all his jokes which is not exactly a thing he dislikes. Plus, he's allowed to have _friends_.

"She calls all the time. You don't think that's weird?"

It actually _has_ occurred to him that the calling is an issue but the girl's young, she wants advice and a friendly ear, just wants someone to talk to about having had to discharge her weapon, the cost of the job and he does understand, remembers being a rookie too. Only he had Mac there with him. This girl? It's just not the same. He's not just going to hang up the phone on her.

"She turns up looking for you at work, she sends you texts, she asks you to meet up with her – and you don't think any of this is a problem?"

So the showing up at work is totally weird, and he definitely caught the look Ed exchanged with Jules the last time, he's not an idiot and even Sam gets his eyebrows up every time, it's only Winnie who stays completely professional, always greets Marissa with a smile and a, 'Could you sign in? Here's a pen,' and like he said, it's weird. "I'm not interested in her."

Winnie shakes her head at him like he's completely hopeless, snorts rudely and then sounds completely drained when she says, "Okay. Fine." Like this fight has taken it right out of her.

It's suddenly important to him that she understands just _why_ he's not interested in Marissa, that maybe (and he's not admitting that Winnie's right here, not at all) she has a harmless crush but the point is that _he_ doesn't. At all. Isn't interested because Winnie is captivating enough for him and he's never been one of those guys who could juggle more than one woman at a time (has never actually ever wanted to, to be honest). "It _is_ fine," he says carefully. "Because I'm with you. I _love_ you. She's just a friend."

She just sighs.

"Come on, what, don't you trust me?" Winces as soon as he says because it kind of feels like he just guilted her into letting it go and he doesn't like to fight that way. "Winnie-"

She fiddles with the hem of her sweater, rolls her eyes at him but he sees the change. "Of course I trust you." Makes a face like she's just confessed to stealing the crown jewels and then slides around the table, mutters that she loves him too into his neck, hugs him tightly, body pressed right against his and then sighs. "Seriously? Seriously. We're arguing and you're just-"

"Can't help it," he says grinning at her, thinks he should probably be embarrassed but- "What can I say? It's like a compliment to you."

She rolls her eyes. "I think it says more about you than it does about me." But he sees a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth and he almost sighs in relief because having Winnie mad at him just sucks and he doesn't like it.

"Wanna help me take care of it?"

She rolls her eyes again. "I can't believe you just said that." She sighs like she's got the weight of the world on her shoulders. "Ugh, fine. Let's go." Flashes him that grin, the one that makes him feel twice as tall and better than he knows he is.

Her ponytail smacks him in the face as she turns around and he laughs, catches up quickly and they end up on the stairs, the very top one digging into his back and her hair in both of their faces.

So that's what he's thinking about when he's sitting at Starbucks, has to keep wrenching himself back to the conversation, Marissa sitting across from him with one of those weird fancy drinks that he's never understood the appeal of, sitting in front of her.

He's bored.

He feels like a total ass admitting it, even just to himself, but he is and all he can think about is calling Winnie and crashing her dinner with her best friend. He feels like a teenage girl, actually. It's just-so Marissa _does_ call a little too much but it's fine, she's _fine_.

Although. Ever since Winnie brought up the whole thing, he's kind of been looking at it with new eyes, thinks that maybe it's weird when Marissa rubs him on the arm when she's laughing or texts him at one in the morning asking if he wants to meet up for a drink (he's stopped answering those ones entirely). It's just – well, he wanted to prove that it wasn't like that, that he can have friends same as he did before Winnie. Except now, he's kind of looking at her and thinking she's a little overdressed and made up for Starbucks.

He's also thinking about the last time he and Winnie got coffee, Saturday morning, both of them with the day off, walking through the Distillery and then stopping at Balzacs, Winnie in one of his sweatshirts and these tight jeans, all relaxed with her hair pulled back as she read the front page of the paper, so pretty he couldn't get his eyes off her.

"Spike?"

"Huh?" He has no idea what she just asked him, no idea actually what he's even doing here. Now that he thinks about it, he'd rather be hanging out with Sam or Leah, old hockey game on in the background if it's Sam or one of those truly horrendous chick flicks that Leah likes so much, not having to find things to say, family and things that are easy (really, he'd rather be with Winnie most of all).

She laughs. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Uh. Sorry."

"Lot on your mind?" She gives him this smile, twists a piece of hair around her fingers and he suddenly sees the red flags, everything all lit up from fifty feet away. "Is it – something going on with your girlfriend?"

"Uh no. Not at all." Not that she'd be the person he'd be telling even if there was. "Uh. I don't want you to take this the wrong way or anything. But um. I kind of. I think I should go." It's a little abrupt but he's never been that good at turning someone down (after all, he used 'it's not you, it's me' seriously and earnestly until Natalie Braddock told him it was a problem).

Her eyes get really wide and inside, he's cursing himself and also wondering how many times Winnie's going to tell him she was right (he can already see the smug little look on her face, already wants to kiss it right out of her, till she forgets about being smug at all). "What? Why? It's early still!"

"Yeah well. Uh." He spends a good minute clearing his throat. It's just – she hasn't _done_ anything in particular to make him think Winnie was right, just this vibe he's suddenly noticed and he doesn't want to make things awkward, doesn't want things to be weird. "I think we've been hanging out a lot," he says carefully.

"We're friends," she says, laughs that easy laugh but he also sees the way her eyes flick towards his. So basically, if he repeats this story to anyone he works with, he's going to get laughed at or fired because of all the people in the world who should have known better-

"We are." No, they're not. "But. I think we're uh. Getting a little too-" His brain stalls. "Friendly."

"Friendly," she repeats.

He twists his empty cup around to have something to do with his hands (and also so he doesn't have to look at her because this is excruciatingly weird). Has no idea what to do when she reaches across the table and lays her hand over his.

"Look, if your girlfriend has a problem with us-"

He moves his hand. "She doesn't." She doesn't, is what he's realizing because all she tried to do was warn him and he told her to relax, called her irrational and possibly, he has a year's worth of making it up to her to get started on.

"Well I don't see why else. Unless she's insecure."

He makes a face at her tone, all catty, the kind of girl he always avoided in high school.

"I'm just saying-"

"She's not like that," he says before realizing that he really doesn't have to justify anything, least of all to her. "It's just got to stop. The calls and the showing up at work. All of it."

She doesn't say anything and he takes that as a good sign.

"Um. Okay. Well. I'm gonna go." He at least knows enough not to apologize to her.

He picks up his coat, drops his cup in the recycling on the way out. He's already got his finger on Winnie's speed dial, thinks he doesn't actually give a shit if she wants to act smug, not at all.

"Hey!"

"I'm an idiot," he says, pulling his coat on, phone between his ear and shoulder. "How's dinner?"

"Dinner's great. What happened?"

He clears his throat. "Well. I-"

"Spike? Hang on a second!"

He closes his eyes briefly, lets out his air through his nose. "Win, can I call you back in like one second?"

Winnie laughs. "You been drinking? Calling me to tell me you're going to call me? Sure. Talk to you in a sec."

He hangs up and then turns around slowly. Marissa's covered in the light from the street lamp and he has this idle thought like she's pretty. But that it doesn't mean he _wants_-

"I don't get it. We're friends, aren't we? Why can't we just-"

He sighs and then takes a step back because she takes a step forward. "Okay. Uh, we're just going to. Slow this down for a sec." And yes. It appears that he is now going go try and _negotiate_ his way out of this situation. He clears his throat. "I think you're-look, you're great. But-

"But what?"

He has to take another step backwards because apparently, she's not getting the hint here and he's pretty sure it's mostly his own fault, all that answering her calls and not telling her to stop crossing the line.

"Spike-"

"I have a girlfriend," he says firmly. "So. Whatever you're thinking that this," he motions between them, "is going to be. It isn't."

"I'm not thinking that-"

"Marissa-"

"She's a _dispatcher_," she says. "She's never going to understand everything that we-"

He laughs, can't help it, thinks about Winnie looking at him after he walked in from the garage the day they all lost Lew, Team Four in the gym and none of them meeting his eyes, how she drove him home after his first shift back a week after Lew's funeral because she saw him sitting in the car with the keys in his hand. Thinks about Winnie shooting Sam that sympathetic look after Steve came in looking for Jules, thinks about Winnie with one hand on Dean Parker's back, handing him paper towel after paper towel and telling him to pinch his nose at the top to stop the bleeding that day the kid showed up with a black eye. Thinks about how he feels like he can tell her anything, anything at all about work and bad shifts and all the people they sometimes can't help, and she never tells him that he's being irrational. Thinks sometimes, she understands what it means to be a cop better than he does. "Yeah. Okay. Well. This? This is never going to happen." He gives her a tight smile and then turns around, starts walking. She doesn't follow him this time.

"Spike, what's-"

"So. I love you. A lot. And I'm stupid. And you were right. Come over after dinner?"

There's a pause and then Winnie snickers. "She try and get you into bed or something?"

"Not even close."

"I did tell you," she says unsympathetically and he can see the smile on her face, can hear how she's grinning at him, eyes all bright and it makes his heart contract a little, loss of blood before it starts beating again.

"You did." He's smiling too. "Win-I shouldn't have said that you were-"

"It's okay."

"It isn't. I'm sorry. _Really_ sorry. Can I make it up to you?"

The background noise on her end suddenly cuts out. "Ooo. Sounds fun. My choice?" Her tone's all teasing and he thinks she must have just stepped outside and just like that, she's all he wants, he can picture her in that dress, the heels, hair all pulled to one side.

"Always."

She laughs. "We're just paying. I'll come over?"

"You guys need a ride?"

She laughs again. "Nah. We're good. I'll meet you at home." And all he hears is promise, her voice all low, thinks he wants to get her wound so tightly that she loses every inhibition she has (not that there's many around him, not anymore), wants her telling him exactly what she wants, her voice in his ear, desperate and- "Spike?"

He huffs, rolls his eyes at himself. "Yeah. Hurry up." He's grinning.

"You hurry up yourself," she mutters but he can still hear her smiling. "See you soon."


	8. The Last Thing I See

AN: Probably, I need to apologize for this one - the level of fluff is pretty much at the height of ridiculous. Does the nod to Meatloaf make it better or worse?

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**The Last Thing I See Is My Heart Still Beating**

The knock sounds hesitant. Totally not like Jules at all.

"Uh. Winnie? Everything okay in there?"

Winnie glances up from where she's sitting on the edge of the bathtub thinking that one of these days, they really need to redo the tiles in here and clears her throat. "Um. You can come in."

Jules peers around the edge of the door. "It's kind of been a while. Just wanted to make sure you were okay."

She waves the stick at her. "It's positive. So. That's four of them. Not counting the one I dropped in the toilet. I think the universe is probably trying to tell me something."

"Congratulations." Jules's voice is all warm and she looks so excited-

"Uh. Yeah. Uh. Thanks."

"You okay? You look a little pale," Jules says with concern.

She takes a breath in. "I'm not…_not_ happy. We just. We literally talked about this two weeks ago, both of us said we weren't ready yet and-"

Jules gives her that reassuring smile, SRU down to her bones. "Hey, come on. You guys are married. It's not like you just met." Is she joking? Winnie thinks she's joking. "This isn't the end of the world."

"Um, funny, cause it kind of feels exactly like that." She tries to smile, tries to show that she's joking too but actually, she's not entirely sure that she is, this panic rising up in her, like she's going to drown from the inside out.

Jules leans against the doorframe, keeps looking like she's the pinnacle of calm. "Sam and I weren't ready either. I don't know if anyone's ever ready to be a parent."

Winnie drops her face into her hands. "Oh god. Okay, seriously, how in the hell did this happen?"

There's a pause. "Um. Are you asking me for grade eight Health class or-"

"We're _careful_. More than careful. We're fucking fanatical about it. _How did this happen_?"

"Winnie-"

"Like, what is this, a bad after-school special? I mean. You forget _one_ time!" One fucking time and now-

"Winnie-"

"We _just_ decided that we were going to wait, maybe start trying next year. That's a whole twelve months away. Twelve months to-"

"Winnie." Jules raises her voice ever-so-slightly, this tone of voice like she's telling Sadie not to jump off the kitchen counter.

"What?"

"This is amazing. Isn't this amazing?"

Winnie stares at her. "What kind of mother am I going to be that this doesn't feel amazing?" she suddenly moans. "I'm not ready!" And she doesn't know what she's going to _tell_ him, everything suddenly getting changed around and this schedule they'd had in mind totally disappearing into thin air, The Plan getting totally blown out of the water. (Not that they had much of a plan in the first place but it didn't involve having a baby _right the fuck now_.)

"No one's ever ready," Jules says and she looks equal parts amused and sympathetic. "But then you're going to have nine months to get used to this idea. Um. Or less," she says hastily, looking at Winnie's face. "But still. There'll be lots of time to get yourself used to this. And then you'll hold your baby for the first time and everything'll change."

Winnie snorts. "Change? Change how? Oh _god_, what if I'm one of those people that just never gets attached? You hear stories about that. What if my baby _hates_ me?"

"Your baby isn't going to hate you," Jules says patiently, like she deals with hysterical pregnant women every Sunday morning before her coffee.

Winnie's aware that her breathing is shallow, is trying her best to even it out but- "Oh fuck, am I supposed to be taking vitamins? I'm supposed to be taking vitamins, aren't I? Have I been drinking since I-oh god, we don't _have_ anything, we don't even have a place for it to sleep!"

"You'll get a crib. You'll put it in one of the spare rooms."

"This is going to be the end of sex. That's what everyone says. You have kids and the sex just. That's it." She gestures dramatically with her left arm.

Jules laughs, covers her mouth with her hand and looks like she's trying to stop. "I don't know who 'everyone' is but I'm telling you that's not how it is. You'll have to get creative." She arches an eyebrow. "And I don't mean creative like behind a tree on the Island because that wasn't creative and it wasn't stealthy and my brain still hasn't recovered."

Winnie's barely listening to her, shakes her head. "What am I going to tell him?"

Slowly, Jules takes a seat beside her on the edge of the tub, rests her hand on Winnie's. "You're going to tell him that plans never work out and the two of you are going to have a kid and he's going to be so happy."

"Yeah?" Winnie wants to believe her _so badly_.

"You've seen him with kids. He's _great_ with kids." She smiles. "Kids love him."

Possibly, she's kind of seeing why Jules is so good at her job. She lets out a breath. "Right. You're right." Jules is right.

"And _you're_ great with kids. You're the kind of people who should have a hundred of them."

Okay, well _that's_ definitely an over-exaggeration. "Jules-"

"Seriously. Sometimes, I think _my_ kids would trade me and Sam in for the two of you."

She cracks a smile at that, just for a second. "We didn't plan-"

"Winnie?" Jules pauses until Winnie reluctantly turns and looks at her. "It's okay. It's more than okay. You are going to be great. And all of you are going to be happy."

Winnie sighs, tugs her fingers through her hair. "Who in the hell would ever let me parent a kid?" she mutters moodily. "I mean. I let kids eat candy after they've brushed their teeth and stay up late and if they want a cookie before dinner, I'm all just like, you know, go ahead."

"Okay, so I'm probably never letting you babysit ever again," Jules says with a snicker and then looks at her with all this understanding, like Winnie isn't about to flip out and end up in another dimension. "You're not going to do that with your own. I promise. You'll be fine. Better than fine."

That conversation from two days ago is what Winnie's thinking about the whole time she pokes at the pot on the stove and thinks that she _hates_ collard greens and if she has to sign on for eating them for the next six months (you know, give or take), she's going to take a very long walk off a very short pier.

She hears the front door open and she steels herself, tries not to look like she's about to drop a bomb on him (she's been gearing herself up to tell him for the past day and a half but between one bad shift and the two of them trying to get used to being back on days – well in any case. She hasn't told him yet).

"Just me!" he calls out and usually what she yells back is that she knows, and she's in the kitchen or the bedroom or wherever she is but tonight, the words feel stuck in her throat. She hears him hanging up his coat, can almost picture his face before she sees it. "Bella," he says with a grin and like okay, usually she rolls her eyes at him when he whips out the Italian pet names because he's such a gigantic cheese ball and she totally loves it but tonight she just gives him a shaky grin, slides her arms around him and buries her face in his neck, tries not to think about plans unravelling.

"Hi."

He laughs, the sound making her relax ever-so-slightly. "Missed you today. Please don't switch with Sid next time. He's not nearly as beautiful as you are." (Like she said - cheesy. Also though, it always makes her smile.) He presses a kiss to her forehead and then tips her chin up so he can kiss her properly.

"How was work?"

He shrugs, smiles that easy-going smile at her. "Just patrol. Some idiot borrowed Babycakes, totally messed up her hydraulics so, had to spend half the day fixing that. I told Boss he should put it in the budget that every team gets their own."

She laughs. "Yeah. That'll fly."

He laughs too, leans down and kisses her again. "Okay, I gotta ask, Win. What in the hell are you cooking?"

She makes a face before she can stop herself. "Collard greens. With garlic."

"Um. Why? Since when do you like collard greens?" He looks confused, like he's wondering if this is actually a thing he could have missed.

"We're not getting any younger, you know! We should be taking care of our bodies!" So she might need to calm down, just a little.

He raises an eyebrow, then snickers, leans down to bite playfully at her neck. "Yeah? I can take care of your body if you want."

She snorts, pushes him away from her giggling. "So lame." Although, actually, maybe they can just do that instead, forget these collard greens and forget telling him that she's about to throw a wrench right into the trajectory of their lives and then she thinks that that's what got her into this in the first place and she doesn't even know-

He grins at her, picks up a carrot and bites into it, leaning back against the counter. "What else? Want me to make something?"

"Chicken in the oven. Um. And potatoes." Because it's something she's going to have to get used to. She and Spike can live off canned peaches and mustard after shift but there's no way she's feeding that to her kids.

Kid.

Just one.

"Wow. I'm impressed."

"I cook sometimes!"

"Of course you do," he says soothingly.

She snickers and narrows her eyes at him, feels this moment of total gratefulness that his ability to make her laugh hasn't changed. "You better be careful," she warns grinning at him. "I know where you sleep."

He slides his arms around her waist when she turns back to the stove to poke at the unappetizing-looking greens, presses a kiss to her cheek and she leans back against him, listens to him talk about his day, thinks that she'll wait until he's sitting down to tell him.

She fidgets all through dinner (and the collard greens are gross, she has to practically choke them down and she makes a mental note to ask Jules how exactly she's supposed to cook them so they don't taste like wet rags) and they clear up and she figures Spike is going to go read in his office because he may love her but his love doesn't extend to the kind of bad reality tv she usually likes to watch on Tuesday nights. Except tonight, she kind of follows him, lounges in the doorway shifting from foot to foot, wonders how exactly you bring something like this up and thinks she should have asked Jules about that, instead of about how exactly to pee on a stick.

He shoots her a weird look. "What's wrong?"

"Um. Um." She exhales very slowly. "Um. You think you can take off next Monday morning? Just for a couple hours."

He raises his eyebrows at her. "I'm sure I can. Why?"

She pauses from where she was about to turn around and leave. "Why what?"

"Why am I taking it off?" he asks patiently, eyes already on the book in front of him.

She spends a good minute clearing her throat.

"Winnie?"

"Uh. Yeah?"

He gives her a look. "What is it?"

"Um. Well. Pretty sure I'm knocked up, actually. So. Figured I should go to the doctor and get it confirmed."

He just stares at her, mouth kind of open and no discernible expression on the rest of his face.

"Okay. Well. That's all." She turns to leave, his hand on her wrist almost the same second she turns around even though she didn't see him move, all those cop reflexes, things she never thought would be for her (and how, now she can't imagine it any other way).

"Wait, what?"

She tries to smile but her heart is hammering in her chest so hard it almost hurts. "Yeah. I know. I mean. You know, I figured the first three tests I took could be false positives. But then. The next one was positive too."

"And what? Four's the magic number?" There's this slow smile spreading across his face and he looks kind of like he's-

She shrugs up at him, has absolutely no idea, but it was supposed to be five and then one of them was a write-off and now four seems like a good number of tries. Like, an _adequate_ number of tries.

He's full on grinning at her and she thinks if she could just stop her heart from racing, maybe she'd be grinning too. "A baby? Us?"

"I know. And I _know_ we just talked about-"

"Can't plan for everything, can we?" And he's still got that look on his face, is fixing his eyes on her stomach and she wants to push at his shoulder, tell him that there's nothing to look at there (at least, there certainly wasn't three hours ago and if there is now, she's going to insist on wearing sweatpants for the next six months straight). His fingers catch her jaw and he looks right into her eyes. "You okay with this?"

"I…are _you_ okay with this?" She wants to tell him that she's worried about being a shitty parent, about their kid being a total brat, that she has no idea how to change a diaper for a newborn, that she's just a little freaked out. Because a couple of weeks ago, they were agreeing that they weren't _ready_ to have a baby and now they're apparently having one anyway and it doesn't feel as foreign and intimidating as it did two days ago and she doesn't know what to do about that.

"Um. Kinda scared? But. This is awesome."

She finds herself grinning right back at him, this sudden excitement rushing right through her. "I know right?" She suddenly wants to know what their child will look like, if it'll be some kind of mix of the two of them, this hope that it's Spike's smile she sees in the kid they have.

He's got his thumbs just under her shirt, brushing against her stomach. "And you didn't want to move into this place. I told you all the extra space would come in handy."

She rolls her eyes at him, still grinning. "Right. Been planning this long?" She fought him hard on moving in here but then he'd convinced her, all those logical arguments that weren't logical at all, arguments that she just couldn't argue with, loved it the second it was theirs, loved it even more when they'd stood in the front room and she looked at all the boxes they had, wondered how in the hell they'd acquired so much stuff and he'd kissed her, looked possibly happier than she'd ever seen him.

He laughs. "Well. We can't just have one."

He's always said three and she's always said maybe they should have the first one first, see how it goes and like, two's the average, that's what Sam and Jules have got and Ed and Soph, but now she's thinking maybe three would be a good number. Three. Like Wordy and Shel. "Yeah? You giving birth to the rest of them?"

"I would if I could."

She sighs, raising her eyes to the ceiling. "Easy to say when it's completely impossible."

He laughs again, kisses her hard on the mouth. "This is. You know, just when I think I can't love you any more than I already do."

She tosses her hair at him. "You can always love me more," she says jokingly.

He pushes pieces of hair off her face, tucks it behind her ears, fingers never leaving her skin. "Yeah. I probably always can."

She smiles at him, thinks that she feels the same, thinks that things between them have always been this way, paralyzing fear that's not so paralyzing with the knowledge that he'll be beside her for any step she takes. Thinks that she was scared about this at first but now, looking at him, seeing everything that she's seeing, she thinks maybe they can enjoy it. "So. Just to let you know, I'm getting final say on the name. I'm sorry. No Michelangelo Junior."

"What's wrong with that?" he says, snickering at her.

She narrows her eyes at him.

"Fine fine. No Michelangelo Junior. Ruin all the kid's fun."

"We okay to do this then?" She swallows hard (it's just – The Plan. The Plan is so completely and totally out the window).

He raises his eyebrows. "Don't really think we're getting much of a choice in the matter," he points out. "It's kind of…you know. Already done." He kisses her again. "But I'm uh. I'm okay to do this."

"Me too," she confesses, grins at him. "Um. Like, I'm kind of excited."

"Good. That's good. Cause. Me too." He smiles at her and his eyes are all bright.

She stares at him, wonders if she could have ever predicted that this would be the outcome of agreeing to go out with him once, of turning up on his doorstep in the middle of the night years ago, everything between them suddenly becoming solid and real, how two people could figure out how to grow into a life together. "I love you. Like. Possibly more than I thought I did a week ago?"

He laughs, leans down and kisses her deep, the kind of kiss that usually ends with both of them ripping each other's clothes off. "Yeah."

And she sees all those things she feels reflected right back at her.


	9. Because I Still Believe

**Because I Still Believe**

Winnie knows she's making a really unattractive face but she can't help it, Spike telling her that he's volunteered for the Christmas Eve shift so they'll be working together and okay, yes, she's not exactly _complaining_ but also, it's not like him, not at all, usually he bitches like anything if he happens to draw the short straw and is stuck working on Christmas Eve.

Her first December at SRU, he kept taping bits of mistletoe above all the doorways, over the ceiling of her desk (it led to some very awkward kisses on the cheek for her, hi there kevlar-clad men she'd known for five minutes, but also, he found it hilarious and even when she thinks about it now, she thinks it was worth it to see him laughing).

Her second Christmas at SRU, Spike kept tossing these mini-candy canes at her over the desk for like, weeks on end (he had unerring aim for the left side of her forehead), kept bringing in this chocolate peppermint bark from god knows where but chocolate peppermint bark was her biggest weakness until that Christmas. Because he picked out the dark pieces for her and laid them on a napkin and she ate so much of it that she realized she'd never be able to eat it again.

Her third Christmas at SRU, she went skating with Team One and their families, couldn't stop laughing when a game of friendly hockey broke out and Spike unceremoniously handed her a stick and told her to try and get the puck in the net and if she wanted to body-check Sam and send him into the boards, she should just go ahead.

She knows that things have been a bit off since he asked her out and she said no and she's not going to flatter herself into thinking he's working Christmas Eve because she is, she's not an idiot. But she also thinks he's been acting really weird this year, no mistletoe anywhere near her desk and before, she thought maybe it was because he wanted things between them to not be weird and obviously, if he'd put mistletoe over her desk, she'd eventually have ended up having to kiss him and it would have just been-

Well. She doesn't think she'd have aimed for his cheek, not this year.

Which – she really needs to have her head examined. Because she said _no_ and so that ship has sailed and she's up a creek without a paddle, nevermind how she _feels._

And it's not like she's sad about spending Christmas Eve alone or anything, her mom going up to Saskatoon to see this old school friend that's sick and Winnie _told_ her to go, booked the ticket for her but still, it's like a tiny bit sad, her brother in Victoria and just no one hanging around in her apartment waiting for her on Christmas Eve.

So she's also kind of like, _glad_ that she'll at least get to see Spike.

Which just goes to show, she really does need to get a grip. Plus Christmas Day, she's heading up to her best friend's family, thinks it'll be pretty great to catch up with people she's known since she could barely walk.

And also, she shouldn't be like, _excited_ to be on the Christmas Eve shift with him. Like, really. Stop. She has to stop.

She sits a tin of gingerbread on her desk at the start of shift, everyone who passes by trying to be in a good mood that they're working on Christmas Eve and she thinks gingerbread always helps. Spike grins at her, makes a beeline for her desk as he passes by talking to Jim and peers into the tin before he raises his eyebrows. "Wow. Nice decorating."

"Oh shut up," she mutters, grins back. "My hands got a little shaky by the end."

He holds up one in a karate pose, the icing outline completely crooked. "Cute."

"I thought so." Reaches over until her fingers close over the small wrapped present, lays it on the top of her desk and pushes it at him. "Merry Christmas."

He grins at her, looks so happy that she doesn't even know what- "I've got yours in my locker. I'll drop it by before I leave."

And like, he's gotten her something every single year so it's like _seriously_ ridiculous for her heart to be like, happy. Seriously. She needs to re-lax.

He chews thoughtfully. "My Ma used to make these sugar cookie things with like. White icing all over them."

She raises an eyebrow at him, no idea where he's going with that one. But, she's tasted some of the stuff Spike's mother has pulled out of her kitchen. "Did she send you some? Jealous."

He laughs. "What are you doing after shift?"

She shrugs, doesn't want him to feel bad for her, it's not like it's the worst thing in the world; she does at least have a place to go home to. "Um. You know. Watching some Christmas movies maybe."

He looks are her carefully and then nods. "What about tomorrow?"

"Heading up to farm country," she says, feels better the more she thinks about that. "My best friend's parents live in Bolton so. Christmas in Bolton."

"Sounds like you should run into Eloise," he says with a laugh.

She rolls her eyes, grins up at him. "What about you?"

"My sister's coming, bringing the whole family. I don't know who wants to fly out right on Christmas Day but that's what she's doing."

"That sounds like it'll be great," she says softly, gets this silly twinge of missing her mom.

"Yeah." He smiles at her over the desk, snags another gingerbread man. "Well. I'll see you later."

"See you later."

He stops by every hour, keeps bringing her these cups with different drinks in them, all of them in line with the holiday theme, gingerbread flavoured lattes and peppermint hot chocolate. Most of them are disgusting but it makes her laugh whenever she sees him approaching and he looks pleased when she laughs. So.

Also. When he's walking past her desk in his street clothes, he hands her a small package, grins at her. She shouldn't smile as wide as she does. But. Whatever.

At the end of shift, she packs up her stuff, tosses some candy canes at Sid as she's leaving, still has a smile on her face as she pushes open the main doors.

"Win!"

She glances up from where she was going through her purse looking for her metropass, totally the poster child for getting mugged, even if she is technically still on SRU property. "Spike! What are you still doing here?"

"Um. I uh. I was just wondering if you wanted to come over."

She stares at him. In her wildest imaginings, that would not have been something she'd ever hear come out of his mouth, not today. Not after the whole 'I'm flattered but' thing.

He clears his throat. "Just – look. I know your family isn't around. And mine isn't either. So. Just thought maybe we could spend Christmas Eve together."

She swallows, knows that she should say no because it's going to give him the wrong idea and she doesn't want to do that. But then she thinks about going home to her empty apartment and turning on the Christmas lights she strung and watching Home Alone on her own and it just feels- "Okay. Sure. Yes."

"Yeah?" He grins at her, once, really bright and she feels totally floored, like she's having an out-of-body experience when she gets in his car.

He talks to her about Christmas the whole way back to his house, how he can't wait to see his nephews and what he bought them and how when he was a kid, his Ma used to start baking on December 1st and she thinks him talking about something he likes does something really great to his whole face. And she also looks at his hands on the steering wheel, has to force her brain away from things she shouldn't be thinking about. He's just-he's got some good hands is all she's saying.

Her mouth drops open when they walk into his place and he glances behind him, grins at her. "I can't take all the credit. Jules did most of it – the bows are all her."

"It-it's amazing," she says. Takes in the silver ornaments on the tree, branches wound through the stairs with little fairy lights in them, lights strung over every doorway.

He laughs. "Yeah well. I'm probably not going to feel that way when it's time to take it all down." He sounds all teasing and she suddenly feels so _glad_ that she's here. "Leah was over the other night, got herself all liquored up on eggnog but I think she left some behind. You want?"

She laughs. "Sure." Even though she hates eggnog. Thinks she'll do anything he wants her to do if he keeps smiling at her like that, the lights everywhere casting this glow on everything that's just a little too pretty and low.

He flips on the tv, the Christmas music channel and she smiles, leans her hip against the island in the kitchen, thinks that this appalling Christmas tune is right, nobody ought to be alone on Christmas.

"So. I was supposed to share those cookies my Ma sent. But I totally ate them all and tomorrow, my nephews are going to want some and she's going to ask them how they were."

She stares at him and then bursts out laughing. "You gigantic pig," she teases. Starts talking before she can stop herself. "Um. Do you have the recipe? There's time to make some now. Right?" Seriously. Seriously, Winnie, be a little more obvious, go on.

He gives her a look that's all pleased though, like she's gone and done something that he hoped she'd do but that he didn't want to get his hopes up for. "You going to help?"

"Are you seriously still making fun of me for the icing?" she says, cuffs him lightly on the shoulder, forces her hand to get the hell off his shoulder. "It's _outlining _I'm bad with."

He laughs. And that's what they end up doing and he measures and tips the ingredients in so quickly that she almost can't keep up, his hands faster than hers so that by the time she's shaped three little cookies and dropped them on her baking sheet, he's filled a whole tray.

They put the trays in the oven (he jostles her lightly, gets his tray in before hers like it's a race and she rolls her eyes but then she grabs the timer out from beneath his fingers before he can pick it up, smirks at him) and he says, "That's fifteen minutes we've got to wait. 'Nother drink?" with this big grin on his face.

She makes a face at him but then he's mixing Bailey's into coffee and usually, it's really gross but he does something with the proportions that has it tasting like melted chocolate is sliding right down her throat and she thinks probably, she should stop drinking because even though it's just Bailey's and eggnog, pretty much if she keeps going like this, she's going to end up drunk and confessing that she wants to kiss him or something.

She figures doing the washing up is the least she can do, Christmas lights all around her and Christmas music in the background and Christmas drinks. He stands next to her, dries the bowl and the spatula and makes her laugh the whole time.

"Six more minutes," he says, checking the timer and she's about to follow him into the living room when his hand tugs on her sleeve and he turns back to face her, both of them suddenly standing where there's not enough room.

"What is it?"

He shrugs, motions upwards. "Mistletoe."

And she feels like her heart's in her throat, how badly she wants him to kiss her, properly, how badly she wants to mean it. "Oh," she says vaguely. Wonders whose bright idea it was to hang mistletoe in this doorway, wonders how she missed it when she walked in the house and obviously, she must have just been looking at the decorations and all the lights and-

His face is so close to hers and she knows she's holding her breath and she _knows_ all her arguments and she knows they're all valid and she knows they make sense but somehow, standing here in his kitchen, everything beautiful around them, she doesn't care. He tips her chin up with his fingers, barely touching her and she swallows hard.

He kisses her gently on the cheek and she knows her eyes close, and he stays in her space, just for a moment too long and she kisses him back, just on his cheek but. It makes her think about how badly she wants them both to shift, just a little in either direction.

"Merry Christmas," he says, voice low and she sees the reflection of the lights in his eyes.

"Merry Christmas," she echoes, voice not like her own at all, really husky and she feels this tug in her stomach when he steps back.

They stand there looking at each other for ages and she forgets what they were even going into the living room to do, forgets why they were in the kitchen in the first place and she actually jumps a little when the timer for the oven goes off and he smirks at her, looks all mischievous and she rolls her eyes.

She doesn't know if she's glad or a little disappointed that the mood's broken.

"Time to take them out?"

"Should be. Let's take a look."

Winnie has never been able to wait for cookies to cool and this is no exception, her hand reaching over the baking sheet. Spike catches at it and her breath catches too, his skin against hers, wonders what in the hell is the _matter_ with her.

"They're hot," he points out. "Plus, we still have to put the icing on them."

"Right." Except, she's only looking at where his fingers are still closed around hers.

He lets go of her like he didn't even notice they were touching and she abruptly wonders if he's seeing someone, if he's dating. She has no idea, they haven't mentioned anything like it ever since that night and she feels like an idiot all of a sudden, wonders if he's going to have a guest other than his family tomorrow. She's spending so much time thinking about it and wondering why in the hell she even _cares_ so much who he hangs out with that she misses the next thing he says.

"Huh?"

He raises an eyebrow at her. "Icing?"

"Right. Yes. Icing." Nope, she still has no idea what that has to do with anything, has this ridiculous thought like she'd really like to lick it off of him and knows she's blushing even though it's not like he _knows_ or anything and like, it was just one of those ridiculous thoughts, there and then gone. Anyhow. Not the point.

They both lean their elbows on the counter, icing sugar and a bowl in front of them and he grins suddenly. "We should do colours."

And it shouldn't surprise her at all that he's got food colouring in his cupboard, knowing what she does about his practical jokes and how he always likes to be fiddling with things but still. She looks at him grinning about coloured icing and feels like her heart is moving around her body.

"What are you doing in a few hours?" he asks, both of them dropping colours into different bowls and she raises her eyebrow as she pokes at this putrid purple she's just mixed.

"Um. Sleeping?"

He snorts. "I'm going to Midnight Mass. I mean," he shrugs, "my Ma's going to ask me if I went."

"Still can't lie to her, eh?"

He rolls his eyes. "You wanna come?"

She stares at him, can't remember the last time she went to Midnight Mass (except she can, it was the Christmas after her dad died and it hadn't been the same so she never went back). "Um."

"You don't have to," he says hastily. "I just thought-"

"No. No. Um. It's just." She clears her throat. "Okay look, not to bring the mood down. I just. The last time I went was after my dad died. He used to take us. You know, when we were kids. Just wasn't the same." She's kind of expecting a little pity on his face because that's what people tend to do, hear about her dad and start acting weird, it's why she doesn't talk about him much and-

"Maybe you just need to try again." And she doesn't see any pity on his face at all. He looks _sad_ but it's not the same as pity.

It's why she agrees, five minutes later when the conversation is, by all rights and standards, over and they're mixing up icing and a lot more of it is finding its way into Spike's mouth than is still in the bowls and she's laughing and telling him to stop because all that food colouring can't be good to eat in such enormous quantities and he's nodding at her and licking his fingers.

She just says yes.

He drives her all the way to a church in Woodbridge, gives her an apologetic shrug. "S'just the one we always went to."

She shrugs too because honestly, she doesn't really care what church it is. And when they're sitting together inside, every single pew packed with people and he grins at her, she feels nothing but glad that she's here. With him.

It's not the way Midnight Mass was that year after her dad died. It's not the same as all the years before that either. But. It isn't disappointing.

She kind of thinks maybe that's got something to do with the person beside her.

Spike walks close to her afterwards and she thinks that it's _nice_, this feeling like she has family here even when her mom and her brother are somewhere else.

"What time do you have to get going tomorrow?"

She glances over at him. "Getting picked up at noon. What time does your sister get in?"

"'Round the same time." He clears his throat. "Okay. I'm going to suggest something. And if you think it's insane, that's – it's fine. Not a big deal. Seriously. I'm not going to be offended or anything. I just think that-"

"Spike, what is it?" she interrupts, smiling because sometimes he's just so like, adorable or something, which is so ridiculous and just goes to show that she did have way too much eggnog and like, she doesn't even know.

"So. Christmas Day. When I was a kid, right? We'd wake up early and open presents. Hot chocolate with a fire in the living room." He glances at her sideways. "You want to do that?"

She stares at him. "Okay." Um, what? _Okay_? Seriously, at what point did her brain lose connectivity with her mouth? She can't just-

"Yeah?" He looks totally surprised and it's not exactly a bad expression on his face.

(Actually, she kind of likes it.)

She doesn't say another freaking word the whole drive back, wonders what in the hell she's just signed on for, if she's just gone and like totally overstepped a boundary here but then _he's_ the one who asked and-

They eat some of those cookies when they get back and she almost moans, they're so good. Keeps her mouth shut though. They watch the second half of Love Actually because it's on tv and she has to stop herself from making comments and interrupting the movie, has to be on her best behaviour or she's going to end up picking sprinkles off her cookies and tossing them at the tv.

She can't stop herself at the end though, lets out a rude cackle when Colin Firth ends up in Portugal because Christmas movies are so outrageous and Spike grins at her, gives her this smile that makes her feel so warm, she doesn't even know what to do about it.

He walks her up to his spare room, hands her a towel and a new toothbrush and like, _what in the hell is she doing_, has no idea at all.

But he gives her this reassuring smile. "You need anything else?"

She shakes her head quickly, even though, well pajamas would be a good thing because she's not sliding between his sheets with nothing on, that's just ridiculous plus what if there's a fire and seriously, what was she thinking agreeing to this?

"I'll grab you a shirt to sleep in."

And she's totally grateful – until she puts it on and realizes it smells like him and then she drops her head onto the pillow and slams her arms over her face. Wonders what in the hell is wrong with her.

She has crazy dreams about mince pies coming to life and little presents with arms and legs and then Spike and icing so she's up before the sun rises, trying to stop thinking about her ridiculous dreams.

When it's a more decent hour, she gathers her hair into a ponytail, thinks it's a total shame that the makeup she has in her purse amounts to mascara and the nub of an eyeliner pencil but she does what she can. Not that she like-it's not like he's going to notice. But still.

Okay, possibly, she's lost it, she doesn't even know.

He makes her breakfast, stands at the stove and talks to her and she can't even follow the conversation and she drinks her coffee too fast and burns her mouth when she thinks that this is something that she could get used to. Like. Really. Winnie, get a grip, reality is within your reach.

They sit on the floor in his living room, plates on the coffee table and their legs crossed and he puts on the fire log channel and she laughs so hard she ends up wheezing.

He rolls his eyes at her. "This is the best channel!" he defends.

"Yeah? What do you put on at Thanksgiving? The rotisserie chicken channel?" And seeing his expression sets her off all over again.

He makes them hot chocolate after they eat, and she hovers behind him, even when he tells her he can handle it and she knows he can, it's just-

She kind of likes being in the same room as him, never realized it before because work is what it is but the thing is, he just makes her smile. She leans her elbows on the island, watches him. Thinks that this is a pretty great Christmas so far.

Actually – she's wondering how any Christmas is ever going to top it, all the smiling she's done. He turns around, grins at her, hands her a mug that says, 'I love Mondays' and she laughs, takes a sip, figures presents are next and she can't help but smile when he does.

(Turns out, the year after that tops this one by leaps and bounds.

Jules comes over to decorate and Winnie plants her ass on the couch, Sam next to her with this pint of eggnog in his hand that he keeps filling up, the two of them directing Spike and Jules on where to hang bows and baubles and she makes gingerbread that Spike insults but eats half a tin of. Whenever she passes through a doorway, Spike appears next to her, catches her under the mistletoe every time.

And then later, she and Spike make out while wrapping presents and spend longer than is necessary lying under the tree, laughing, with his lips brushing her bare shoulder.

And when they go to Midnight Mass so that he can tell his Ma he went, he laces their fingers together, makes her heart jump sideways and she leans against him a little, thinks about peace and love and family.)

* * *

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AN: So there's some Christmas fluff for you - totally shameless and unnecessary!

I hope you all have safe, happy Christmases filled with lots of love and all that good stuff. I will be surrounded by family that is and isn't mine, missing people who should be with me but aren't and grateful for every moment I get - I hope you all get to have the same kind of thing because I can't imagine anything better! xo


	10. The End Looks Paved With Gold

**The End Looks Paved With Gold**

"Hey Winnie."

She glances up, has been eavesdropping on Ben's side of the conversation with Team Two, is actually startled when she hears another voice. "Boss. Hey."

He pauses next to her, gives her that smile that always makes her think of milk and cookies after school, eight years old and her dad braiding her hair off her face so it doesn't get into her dinner plate. "You been waiting around long?"

She shrugs. "Just since the end of shift."

He checks his watch, gives her a look she doesn't know what to do with. "Four hours?"

She shrugs again. Nowhere else she could think of to go. Not without Spike.

He clears his throat. "You know SIU can take a while."

"Yeah." She knows.

He slips into the seat beside her, just looks straight ahead. "He's going to be fine."

"I know."

"It's just routine. Nothing to worry about."

She nods her head. "I know," she says again.

"They'll ask him to go through what happened, series of events, the call. It'll be fine."

"Boss? I know." Not her first time through the process, not at all, she knows exactly how it goes, this is the job. After all, she's the one who files those reports (but she also thinks about hard calls, about how difficult the right thing is, about the struggle to stay _human_, the cost of split-second decisions).

"Okay."

She swallows hard. "It's not that I'm worried about. I know he did the right thing. I was on the call, I heard it. But-"

"Making those calls is never easy, Winnie."

"I _know_," she says, shakes her head. "And I know that you guys have to make them. I get it. I just wish-"

He lets out a quiet sigh, doesn't look at her. "I know. That things were different. Truth is-"

"Yeah. I know. I _know_. Someone has to make those calls." She picks at her fingernail. "I just wish it didn't have to be any of you." It would be a whole lot easier if it didn't have to be any of the people she cares about. Probably would be easier than that if she'd been able to keep them all at arm's length in the first place, the way she should have. She'd tried to, way back in the beginning. But Spike had always made her laugh, Lew had always asked her how her morning was going and she'd gone dancing with Jules more than once, had watched the play-offs with Sam and Ed and Boss had brought her coffee, handed it over with a smile and that had been that. And then she'd looked up one day and realized that everything she felt for all of those people went far beyond coworker to coworker and then it was family and then Spike-

Well. The point is - it would be easier but there's no way she can go back now.

Boss smiles at her, this tiny edge of surprise right there in his eyes. "He'll be glad you waited."

She tries to return that smile. "Where else would I be?"

The elevator doors open and Winnie thinks that her breath catches, the circles under Spike's eyes, how dark his eyes are against his skin. He looks tired in a way she's never seen him look before. She wants to push him behind her, make sure nothing bad ever touches him again, wants to know what could possess someone as good as him to choose this job, always knowing that making a hard choice could be just around the corner, the kind of choice that no one else can face making.

She can't get her feet under her, can't push herself up, like she's holding a stone under water.

Boss glances at her, gets up and does what she wanted to do, talks to Spike, makes him smile. Pats him on the shoulder, is still talking to him but Spike's looking at her and if she didn't know any better, she'd think he was scared.

She has no memory of standing up, walking over to him, knows that she stares at him hungrily, this flashback to the day after he asked her out, like she'd looked up and seen something different in him.

"Hey," he says cautiously and actually, she really wants to throw her arms around him, forget all about professionalism and the workplace environment and not touching each other while they're working.

She thinks she smiles at him. "Hey." And she's just always liked the way his face is, the way he looks at her, liked it before she ever even realized she liked it.

Boss is looking between the two of them like he'd like to shake them both, just shakes his head instead and lets out a sigh like he'd really like to roll his eyes. "Spike? I'll check in with you tomorrow. And remember-"

"Yeah, no alcohol, I got it."

Boss smiles. "Of course you do. Well. Get home safe you two."

Winnie watches Spike's head turn, watches the twist of his neck, watches him watch Boss leave. She swallows. "You need to get anything from your locker?"

He stares at her, eyes roaming her face, gives her a shaky smile. "Two seconds. Just have to get my bag. You uh-you going to wait?"

She almost laughs, like what does he think she's been doing here this whole time? And there's no way she's leaving now, not when he's standing right here in front of her. "I-yeah. Yeah, I'm going to wait."

He steps close, close like he's going to kiss her, flashes her a smile and she feels a hint of relief, like he's still in there and he's not going anywhere. Thinks isn't it funny that he can smell the same, Old Spice and that underlying scent of him but that everything can be so different to the way it was this morning (they'd had ridiculous, impractical sex in the shower and he'd only told her once they were in the car that he'd set the alarm half an hour earlier than she'd thought and now they even had time to stop at the Timmy's drive-thru before work. She'd glared at him and huffed about how he'd made her rush to get ready and how her hair was all wet and a little tangled, but then, she hadn't really been that mad, not at all).

She wants to tell him that she'll drive, that she just wants to make things easier for him but she's a little scared the way she's feeling right now, that she'll accidentally step on the gas at a red. He gets in the car, starts the ignition and she reaches across blindly and squeezes his hand hard. She wants to kiss him, wants naked skin right against hers, wants to slide her arms around him.

"Can we go home?" she asks, doesn't even recognize her own voice.

He doesn't answer her, just squeezes her hand back and then doesn't let go of it.

They don't say anything the whole way there, radio off and no other cars on the road with them.

She leans against the wall in his foyer, just stares at him. He locks the door and then leans back against it. He clears his throat like he's going to speak and then doesn't say anything and it's like there's this window between them, glass and reflections and she can't get through it.

"Are you hungry?"

He shakes his head at her and she wants to know why he hasn't just _touched_ her yet.

"Do you need anything?"

And he's still standing there, still not saying anything and she has no idea who moves first, if it's her reaching for him or him reaching for her but her head hits the wall, back and shoulders too, his hands leaving trails of heat on her skin and she's suddenly aware that she's telling him that she needs him over and over and his fingers are pressing hard enough into her ribs that it almost hurts. She's also pretty sure that she pulls so violently at his shirt that she tears off some of the buttons. He gets her right up against the wall, the sweat sliding across all the skin between them and it's really fast, a little too desperate and she's pretty sure she's going to have his fingerprints bruised right into her thighs and that walking is going to be all kinds of non-fun tomorrow.

(She really can't bring herself to care, not with his lips against her neck, the way he chokes out her name against her mouth. Plus, he bites right into her skin right at the end, breaks the surface a little and what is _up_ with her that this is suddenly a thing that turns her on? Thinks that maybe it isn't, not really, but anything he does kind of is.)

Her legs are shaking as he sets her gently on the ground and she wants to start laughing but also hug him as tightly as she can.

"Love you," he breathes right against her temple and then kisses her so that any reply she makes gets lost in his mouth.

They stumble their way up the stairs (and she thinks it's got to say a lot about his state of mind, how he doesn't even say anything about the buttons now missing on his shirt, how they're probably going to be finding them in his front hallway for weeks), get themselves cleaned up.

She's sitting on the edge of the bed when he comes out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist and she clears her throat because for a few minutes there, she thought he was trying to drown himself in the shower. "You okay?"

He looks out the window and then at her. "I'm not going to freak out, if that's what you're asking me."

She licks her lips, thinks about the right way to bring this up. "You haven't taken a Sierra shot the whole time I've been at SRU." Or she could just go straight for the direct approach.

He raises an eyebrow, this hard expression on his face that makes him look like someone else entirely.

"Not that I don't-I'm not saying that I thought you couldn't," she says hastily. "I'm just. Saying."

He gives her this patient kind of look and her jaw drops a little because he's looking at her like he's about to start quoting one of the SRU manuals at her, like she's the one who needs to be talked down here. "I'm fine."

"Yeah. Well. Okay." She nods. "And if you're not. That's fine too."

There's a long pause before he opens his mouth again. "I wasn't wrong."

She looks at how he's standing, how his arms are crossed all defensively across his chest, his jaw set. "I know that." Of course she knows that, didn't have to be on the call to know it for sure.

"I had to take that shot. Got the order to fire."

She just looks at him until his eyes meet hers.

"Cut and dry."

She still doesn't say anything.

"That's the job, Winnie." He sounds like Commander Holleran, those pep talks he gives. Thing is, it's not Norm Holleran she wants to talk to right now.

She doesn't bother telling him that she knows what the job is, knows what it entails, it's why she didn't become a cop in the first place, why she chose what she chose. "You need me to remind you that you made the right call?"

He lets out a breath and she sees him relax ever so slightly. "I-yeah."

"Okay." She licks her lips, thinks about how he's the best person she knows, how he's got more decency in his little finger than most people have ever. "You did the right thing. You did. He was escalating, he was going to kill someone else. He was armed. You did the only thing you could do. And it was the right thing. Even though it sucks." She swallows, wonders how far she should go here. "And I'm glad that there are people like you out there who can make those calls so that the rest of us can be safe. People like you who make those calls so that the rest of us don't have to."

Spike clears his throat. "That was pretty good." Looks like he's trying to smile but is failing miserably.

"Yeah? Future as a motivational speaker?" She thinks she might be shaking, how she can see the effort it's costing him, all this relief that he's still _him_.

"Definitely."

She swallows. "I believe all of that though. Just. You know. So you know."

He leans against the dresser, clears his throat again. "You uh. You didn't have to wait around for me. Just. You know. Next time."

She raises an eyebrow, feels a little taken aback at that one because they always leave together and it's not because she _needs_ a ride, she got home all on her own for years before they got together. "I know I didn't have to."

"Win-"

She shakes her head at him, thinks that doesn't it just figure that he's gone and forgotten what she's doing here with him in the first place. "Stop it. Don't get like that. Don't you know by now?" Clears her throat. "I'm, you know, not going anywhere."

"I know that."

She's really not sure that he _does_ know but then she figures that the only way she's ever going to prove it is by sticking around, accepting every part of him, even the parts he tries to hide – and she's not opposed to that at all (it used to scare her, feeling that way. Doesn't anymore. Or maybe it does and she's just learned to live with it because it sure as hell beats living without him). "I love you."

He stares at her like she's said something he's never heard before. "I-_Winnie_-" He crosses the room, hauls her to her feet and kisses her and she has no idea what his reaction's about but his arms are tight on her waist and she hugs him back, squeezes tightly.

She says it over and over, thinks for whatever reason, he needs to hear it, his arms still tight around her and she _does_, means it in a way she didn't understand until him. Thinks she could probably mean it forever.

* * *

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AN: Possibly, I need a reminder on what fluff actually entails. I'll make it up to you...?


	11. Wherever I Am You'll Always Be

AN: This might just be the most shameless of the fluff (actually...that's a lie because the most shameless is still to come because I have a _problem_ or something. I don't even know).

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* * *

**Wherever I Am You'll Always Be**

"You okay?" He doesn't look at her, just keeps driving like it's a casual thing he's asking here.

"Yes."

"You sure?"

Winnie huffs. "Spike, I'm fine. Why? You don't think I'm fine? Because I'm fine. I'm like. More than fine."

He raises his eyebrows, wonders if she realizes she sounds crazy - not that he's going to tell her that. It's just not like her, neither's the silence and he doesn't know what to _do_, this absurd desire he has to fix things, which he knows is just going to make her mad at him for some reason he objectively gets but still doesn't fully understand, so he forces himself not to try. "Okay. But. If you're not..."

She leans her head on the window, stares out of it. "I'm glad she's happy."

He doesn't say anything, doesn't say that she didn't answer the question and that it would be okay if she's not and that she doesn't have to be rational, not all the time. Not with him.

"It's weird though, right?" She's still staring out the window, watching the lights on the highway and he turns the radio down a little.

"What is?"

"Like. I don't know. The whole thing."

He glances at her, reaches over and squeezes her hand.

She squeezes back hard. "I just. It's like, of course I don't want her to be alone. And he's _nice._ But then there's this really stupid part of me that just. I don't know."

Spike wonders if he should say what he's thinking or if he should just shut up, let her talk. "He's not going to replace-"

"I know." She sighs, glances at him, smiles really small. "I know. I just - wish you could have met him."

He smiles back. "Me too. Although – I dunno, sure he wouldn't have just shot me? Cops are weird about their daughters." He raises his eyebrow at her. "Ed, Wordy, Sam. It's a Thing."

She laughs and he feels relieved.

He thinks about what it would be like if their roles were reversed. Kind of thinks he can imagine how confused she feels over there in the other seat. "You know. Uh. She's still going to love-"

"I know."

He shoots her a sympathetic look. "I'd be weirded out too, if it was me."

She smiles at him, looks happier than she has the whole drive up. "Thanks."

He turns the radio back up and she slides her hand back into his. He's been worried about this weekend ever since they got the invitation, even though obviously, they both knew it was coming and he feels a little less worried now. It's not like he thought Winnie would do anything other than the right thing here but. The thought of her _sad_ and like, having to do something so hard – well. He asked for those days off before she even did.

They sit in the driveway for a few minutes when they get there and he clears his throat. "You know. We can still go stay in a hotel. It's not a big deal."

She snorts. "If you want her to kill me then by all means. At least it'll just be us, right?" Gives him this sad little look and he sees what she must have been like when she was younger, having her dad and then not having him, taking over all those responsibilities because her family had needed her to.

He takes her hand as they head up the front walk and she's clutching to him by the time they get to the front door. It swings open and Matthew's grinning at them, shakes his hand and kisses Winnie's cheek, yells out, "They're here!"

Spike watches Winnie out of the corner of his eye, sees the smile she pastes on her face and he half wants to laugh because it's so obviously false but also, he wants to pick her up and take her home so that she doesn't have to live through this at all.

"How was the drive?" Matthew asks him as he closes the door behind them (and Spike still remembers the funny frozen expression on Winnie's face when she realized this man had a key to her mother's house).

"Good," Spike answers when it becomes clear that Winnie isn't going to. "No traffic. We left just after work so. No rush hour."

"Right right. That's good."

"So. All set for the big day?"

Matthew's face completely changes, like he's so _happy_ and Spike knows Winnie sees it, knows because her face changes too and she looks a little ashamed of herself. "Definitely. Really excited-"

"Baby!" Winnie's mom grabs her and smacks kisses on both her cheeks, looks at her carefully. "You look very nice in that colour."

Winnie rolls her eyes at him but Spike just grins (Winnie's mom is pretty awesome, always sends them cookies and these chocolate cakes with this unreal icing and she thinks he's funny which pretty much is his assessment of whether someone's awesome or not).

"And Spike!" Winnie's mom says, kisses him on the cheek and then pats his shoulder. "So glad you're both here. You need to eat more."

"Mom," Winnie complains.

"So do you, Baby. I don't know what it is with young people today."

Spike snickers at the expression on Winnie's face, like she knows it's not even worth it to say anything.

"Hope you guys are hungry, we've been cooking all day. Your mother seems to think you don't eat when she's not around," Matthew says conspiratorially and Winnie actually cracks a smile at him, a genuine one.

Spike reaches out and tugs gently on Winnie's arm just before they enter the kitchen. "You just say the word and we'll go, okay?"

She rolls her eyes at him but she's smiling. "You know I can't leave."

"Yeah well. Just in case." His eyes fall on a picture of Winnie and her brother when they were kids, both of them perched on their dad's knees and his heart kind of hurts for a moment, especially when he looks at her standing in front of him now, all strong and ready to do the right thing for someone she loves, no matter how she feels. Glances through to the kitchen and then leans down and kisses her hard on the mouth.

She kisses him back, reaches up and hugs him tight. "What was that for?"

He shrugs. "That colour really does look nice on you." He's snickering before he even gets the words out. (Means it though.)

She snorts, shoves at his shoulder but she laces their fingers together and leans her head on his shoulder.

* * *

He waits until later, when they're both ready for bed and Winnie's hanging her dresses over the back of the closet, bitching like anything because "silk wrinkles, just look at this, I'm going to look like crap" and how she needs to find a steamer before the rehearsal dinner. He just watches her in amusement, waits for her to pause for breath. "Got you something, by the way."

She turns around, eyebrows up. "Like a present? What for?"

He shrugs, has no idea because they're not really near her birthday or Christmas or their anniversary and in any case, they don't give these kinds of gifts for those kinds of things anyhow. "Uh. Cause it's Thursday?" It's really the best he can do.

She forgets all about her dresses, bounces onto the bed on her knees with a huge grin on her face. "Gimme!"

He rolls his eyes at her but also, she's all kinds of adorable in her little shorts and t-shirt (she called them her 'modest pajamas', looked all pleased with herself and like, considering some of the other stuff she's shown up in bed wearing, they are. Except then, he takes a look at the miles of leg she's showing and doesn't think they're really all that modest at all). He clears his throat and unceremoniously hands over the skinny rectangular box.

She raises an eyebrow, keeps it raised while she opens it up and then her mouth kind of opens and she swallows hard, face all soft and he kind of thinks that if she's going to look like that, he's going to give her presents every single Thursday until he dies.

(It's just – he doesn't even know where in the hell he got the idea in the first place because the first time he thought about it, she was reading about chemical properties over his shoulder and very sweetly telling him that while she was sure that critical mass and concentration approaching infinity were fascinating, if he didn't turn the light off, she was going to ram that book right through his teeth and he'd laughed and then looked at her and just thought that wouldn't it be great if Lew could have stuck around long enough to see him with a girl who _got_ him.

And it used to hurt a lot to think about Lew, hurt even more to think about all those good times they'd had and all the good times they wouldn't get to have but that night when he'd thought about Lew, it had been a dull ache, an old injury, loss covered in scar tissue, as healed as it was ever going to be and not feeling a debilitating pain when he thought about Lew made him feel like he could miss him forever but not have to be broken about it. And then he'd thought that maybe Winnie had gone and changed how he thought about a few things. Things like guilt and love and hope and if anyone ever asks, he's going to deny he ever thought any of those things at all because really, it sounds like he got switched with a middle-aged woman reading Fifty Shades of Grey.)

"Spike-I..." she trails off.

He clears his throat, slides the bracelet out of her fingers and clasps it carefully around her wrist (and he was definitely right about removing those last two links himself, those skinny little wrists she has). "I uh. Just wanted you to have a reminder."

She swallows, eyes on where his fingers are still around her wrist, only barely touching her. "Of what?"

He clears his throat again, mournfully thinks that this is the very end of his manliness and then shrugs. "That uh. You know. Love doesn't end." (Cause it really doesn't. She reminds him of that every single day.)

She stares at him and then lets out a shaky laugh and he knows she's going to make fun of him for it later but it also kind of looks like she might cry, so possibly this is exactly the kind of reaction he was hoping for. "Um." She looks at it some more, runs her fingers over it and then launches herself at him. "Wanna have sex on the floor?"

He catches her by the waist, laughs because he knows the bed squeaks and because he's probably never going to find a time when he tells her no, grins when she kisses him hard on the mouth. Pretends to sound like it's a boring way to spend the next twenty minutes or something. "Ehh, okay."

(He has to keep his hand over her mouth because she keeps forgetting where they are and he keeps cracking up because she's cracking up. They get there though. Just takes them a little while to stop laughing like a couple of kids.)

Afterwards, she pulls the edge of the comforter over them, snuggles against him and seriously, he's going to need to get off this floor soon because it's not even remotely comfortable which is a thing he didn't realize until about three minutes ago.

"Thanks for coming with me. Dunno that I could have done this without you," she says. Sounds all embarrassed like she's admitting something she'd rather not admit.

He kisses her temple. "Yeah well. It's open bar, right?"

She laughs and he grins to himself. "But seriously. Spike, I-"

"You don't have to," he interrupts, catches the light glinting off the bracelet he just put on her wrist. "You know that."

She presses her lips against his arm. "Yeah. I do. But still."

He wants to tell her that he likes being there for her, likes it the way he does when he's held it together all the way home after a bad shift and then she looks at him and he can just have her slide her arms around his neck and he doesn't have to be _strong_, doesn't have to be anything at all. He wants to tell her that pretty much, he's going to follow her anywhere and that wherever she goes, he's going too. But then she rolls on her stomach and looks at him and he kind of thinks that she already knows all that stuff.

"This floor is really hard," she remarks, leaning on his chest and grinning at him.

He snorts, helps her to her feet, kisses her a few more times and then hauls the comforter off the floor and back onto the bed.

"Hey, Spike?"

He's pulling the sheets straight, has his back to her, glances over his shoulder. "Yeah?"

"I love it. And you. You more than it."

He rolls his eyes at her, turns to look at her properly. "That's good. Glad I don't have to compete with a-" he breaks off laughing at the exasperated expression on her face. "Love you back, Win."

"And tomorrow, at the rehearsal-"

He nods. "I'll be there. Sitting in the pew. Watching you and being bored."

She laughs.

And he thinks that maybe he should be really clear, just so she knows. "It'll be the two of us. Same as it always is."

* * *

Winnie's brother is not at all what he expected. Not that Spike like, _expected_ anything in particular, it's just. The way Winnie talks about him, he kind of expected a kid. James is well over six feet, thoughtful, mature, clearly adores his older sister (Spike's put together some of the stuff Winnie has and hasn't said about her dad dying, figures they probably all had to learn to hold their family together. Makes him sad to think about, Winnie's mom having to raise two young kids all on her own, those same two kids having to finish growing up without a dad).

James takes a seat beside Spike at the rehearsal dinner, clinks their bottles together. "So. How long have you known my sister?"

Spike snorts because wow, is he about to get The Talk? Kind of thinks he is. "Uh. Well we met at work. So. It's been like five or six years now." He also kind of thinks that James is checking his story because there's no way the guy doesn't already know this stuff, how close he and Winnie are.

James raises his eyebrows. "I dated this girl I worked with once. It was terrible. I could never get rid of her."

Spike smiles politely. "Well. I'm lucky enough that it's not like that."

"Really." James narrows his eyes in thought. "Asked her to move in with you kind of quick."

What Spike really wants to do is ask him if there's a question somewhere in there but he just breathes normally, shrugs. "Didn't feel like it. Guess it didn't to her either or she wouldn't have said yes."

It's the first time he sees James crack a genuine smile and he's got to admit, he's a little relieved. "Isn't that the truth." He glances at him. "She seems happy. It's uh. You know. She deserves it."

Spike has no idea what to say to that one, has always thought Winnie was the kind of person who would be happy anywhere doing anything, how easy it is to make her laugh, how she always has a smile on her face, even when she's worked twenty hours straight through.

"So, SRU. Those are like the last-resort cops. Right?"

He raises his eyebrows. "I guess," he says cautiously.

"Dangerous?"

He clears his throat, kind of sees where this is going. "It can be." Wonders what's going to come next.

James nods slowly, glances over to where Winnie's sitting with their mom and Matthew and Matthew's two fully-grown boys. "You be careful then. Please."

Spike follows his gaze, feels a little taken aback because he totally read that one wrong. "I got it."

"All right." James clears his throat. "Okay, so tell me seriously, you think Matthew's son will notice if I steal his date away? It's not like he's paying attention to her anyhow."

Spike laughs, glances at the pretty blonde in the red dress. "Go for it. I got your back."

James laughs too, clinks their bottles together again.

* * *

Winnie walks towards him when the ceremony's over, strapless dress still wrinkle-free and her hair all wavy down her back, this relieved smile on her face and Spike knows he's smiling at her stupidly but seriously, sometimes she just makes him feel like his brain's running slow, like he's got feet for arms, like he's a kid with his first crush on the pretty older girl next door. It's not like he doesn't realize she's beautiful, he knows it. But it's like an objective knowing. Or something. The point is, she can still surprise him and not just with those weird peanut and pear salads she makes when it's her turn to take care of dinner.

"My feet are killing me," she says with a pleasant smile. She waves at someone behind him. "And I'm starving. Tell me you have something in your pocket for me to eat." She pauses and then sighs. "Don't even say it."

He laughs, pulls her close to him and brushes his lips against her cheek, pulls a squashed granola bar out of his jacket pocket and presents it with a flourish. "Of course. And say what?" Smirks at her.

"Oh my god, you are totally my hero right now." She opens the wrapping and shoves half of it in her mouth. "Ugh, you know how much I love Kashi," she says with her mouth full. "How are you the best thing ever?"

He grins at her, uses his thumb to brush some crumbs off her bottom lip. "Sorry, what was that?" he asks with a snort.

She jams the rest of the granola bar in her mouth, balls the wrapper up and then throws her arms around his neck. "Hungry. Haven't eaten since this morning when I had to get my hair done." She leans back and makes a face. "And look at it! I could have done this myself."

He laughs, tugs lightly on a piece of it and then lays it behind her shoulder. "I think it looks pretty great. So does the rest of you."

She rolls her eyes, same as she always does when he tries to tell her how gorgeous she is, swallows the last of her bar and wipes her mouth off with the back of her hand. "You're just trying to get under my dress. I know all about boys like you." She grins, bounces forward to press her lips against his. She tastes like chocolate. "You know, I think you should wear a suit more often. It really does something positive for you." She says it all slyly.

He snorts, knows exactly what she's talking about and he's still never been clear on what her obsession with him wearing a tie is. It's just - well, for most of the other girls he's dated in the past few years, it's been the tac gear.

"Also, please don't leave my side," she says, smiling and nodding at someone to their left. "I'll die."

She's completely melodramatic but he's exactly where he wants to be, stays next to her, holds her hand even as she cycles through all the relatives she has to see, relies on him a little to break the ice with some of them. She takes a deep breath when it's time for the first dance and he slides his hand onto her knee, squeezes and he sees her shoulders relax. She and James make a speech and he knows what it costs her to welcome Matthew and his two sons into their family, figures Matthew's got to know too because he hugs her and kisses her cheek, whispers something in her ear and she nods.

Spike leans over after dinner. "Wanna dance?"

She raises her eyebrows, all surprised and then grins. "Yeah? Okay."

And he doesn't really care that the dance floor is empty because people are still finishing off their food, he pulls her close to him, gets his arms around her and thinks he has just got to be the luckiest guy ever.

"You know, kinda feels like everyone's staring at us."

He snorts. "Maybe your skirt's tucked into your underwear." Only says it because she's got this ridiculously irrational fear about it and it always makes him laugh when she asks him to check.

She glares at him. "Oh shut up," she mutters but there's amusement on her face.

He pulls her closer to him, says his next words right against her hair. "You know I want to marry you, right?" It's not the first time they've hypothetically discussed it. First time he's told her that it's her he thinks about marrying, though.

She lets out this nervous-sounding giggle that he can only raise his eyebrow at. "What do you expect? Why would you just say it like that?" she complains but she's smiling too.

"Just wanted to make sure you knew."

"Yeah well. Kind of figured we weren't just going along till the next six pack caught my eye." Her face has this soft expression on it though and he figures, maybe he shouldn't have sprung all of this stuff on her this weekend. It's done now though and he wouldn't take it back.

"Abercrombie model?"

"You know how much I like them. Almost worth it to lose my sense of smell."

"Oh definitely." He clears his throat. "Well. Good to know you're not going to be taking off in the middle of the night with some pretty boy."

"What can I say? Think I'll keep you." She shrugs. "Probably forever, if that's what we're discussing here."

"Good. That's good. I mean. Me too." There's a pause, song switching again and he suddenly realizes that other people are dancing too.

"I still think six kids is ridiculous. I mean. Come on." She's grinning at him, looks like she wants to laugh at him just a little but also, he sees how her eyes flick to his tie and he just shakes his head at her. "That's a lot of kids, Spike."

"Five?"

"What if our first kid is absolutely monstrous. Like Damian."

"The kid from The Omen?" He lets out a snort. "You know demonic possession isn't a thing, right?"

"Says you," she says haughtily.

He rolls his eyes. "I promise if our first kid is evil, we won't have five of them." He's grinning stupidly hard at her.

"There's a loophole in there, somewhere, isn't there?" she muses. "I suppose that'll do though."

He laughs. "Good for us. Well. Because everyone's apparently staring at us, I'm not going to kiss you the way I want to kiss you. But. I haven't gotten to touch you all day." Tightens his fingers on her waist and then slides his other hand against her neck and kisses her on the forehead. "That'll have to do for now."

She grins up at him, leans closer and rests her chin on his shoulder. "I love you."

He grins too, pulls her closer to him. "Love you too."


	12. Take Me Back To The Start

AN: Possibly, I should be slapped for using this as a title because, hi. Really? But. Apparently a thing I've committed to doing, despite the fact that I really do know better, I swear. Also, this is utter foolishness but it's a happy kind of foolishness.

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* * *

**Take Me Back To The Start**

"What do you need?" Winnie asks without looking up.

Jules snickers. "Nothing. Just. You and Spike, huh?"

Slowly, Winnie moves her eyes away from the screen and raises an eyebrow at her. "Excuse me?" It's not like they'd agreed not to tell anyone. It's just-one date and then showing up at someone's door to essentially take your clothes off did not mean you went around telling people about it. Especially people you worked with, like way to look professional Winnie, sleeping with your coworker after a second and a half (she resolutely ignores the little voice in her head telling her that if he was _just_ a coworker, she wouldn't have wanted to sleep with him in the first place).

"Just. You know. That." Jules does a completely disturbing thing with her eyebrows and then smirks.

"Is there a question somewhere in there?" She's trying to hide her grin but she's pretty easy these days, all someone has to do is say his name.

"Not really," she says casually. "Except you owe me a chocolate chip muffin. A good one."

"Can I ask why?" She turns her neck to check something on another screen before glancing back at her.

"Your first week here," Jules reminds her. "We went out, got really drunk, had to spend the next two days hung over? Any of this ringing a bell?"

Winnie makes a face. "I remember being hung over." Ugh, does she ever. That had possibly been the worst weekend of her entire life, not including that one birthday she and her high school friends had discovered scotch. "But why does this involve me owing you chocolate?"

Jules huffs. "I asked you if you had to sleep with anyone here, who it would be. And you said-"

"Yes, I remember what I said," Winnie interrupts hastily. "Kind of. And?"

"And then, _I _said you should hit that, you know, not in so many words-"

"Thank God for that," she says with a grin, already snorting at the frat boy language coming out of Jules's mouth.

"_And then_," Jules says, raising her voice ever so slightly, "you said that if you ever did, you'd owe me a muffin."

"Yeah, I still don't remember that."

Jules just raises her eyebrows expectantly.

"And even if I _did_ say that, I was probably being, you know, like, facetious."

Jules snickers. "You _are_ hitting that, right?"

"Oh my god," Winnie mutters, throwing a pen at her. "What are you, a twelve year old boy?" She makes a face. "How'd you even know?"

Jules stares at her and then bursts out laughing. "You _do _know how long I've worked with him? Like we all couldn't tell the next day. All the smiling, the good mood..."

"He's always smiling and in a good mood," she mutters, suddenly completely mortified that everyone she works with knows exactly what she's been doing in her off time.

"Not like that."

Winnie rolls her eyes. "Fine. Chocolate chip?" She only agrees because it's all starting to sound vaguely familiar, the drinking and the being hung over and the dancing on a table while loudly declaring that obviously, if she had to pick someone at work to 'change her flat tire' it would definitely be-

"Better be a big one," Jules says with this smirk like she knows exactly what Winnie's thinking. "No skimping out. See you later."

So that's what Winnie does the next morning on the way to work (it nearly makes her late and honestly, standing in a line that's out the door isn't really how she generally enjoys spending the first hour she's awake but also, okay, so possibly, she also remembers something about a stupid bet that she'd never intended to ever lose and she's not a welcher dammit), buys Jules the biggest, most chocolate-y looking muffin she can find and then ties up the bag and throws it at her as she walks past the desk after work out.

"Hey, where's mine?" Boss says with a grin.

"Jules wants to share."

"No she doesn't," Jules corrects, holding it up by the outside of the bag and biting into the top. "Ugh, where did you get this, it's amazing."

Winnie rolls her eyes, is thinking she was definitely half asleep this morning because she should have gotten one for herself.

"Jules, give me a bite," Ed wheedles. "Just a small one."

Jules makes a face at him and then holds it out. "A small one," she warns.

Sam sighs like he knows what's coming, Leah braces herself and Ed glances at Winnie and snickers before he takes a huge mouthful out of the side. Winnie shakes her head, knows how this goes.

"Ed!" Jules complains.

"Not my fault," he mumbles around a mouthful of chocolate. He swallows before he says, "Winnie should have brought us all some. That's really good."

"Yeah well. When you win a bet with her, she will." Jules holds her other arm out to keep him away from her.

"What bet?" Sam asks from where he's leaning his elbow on the edge of the desk. Leah leans closer, interest and amusement all over her face.

Winnie rolls her eyes again, like seriously, Team One is a couple years and some white hair away from a bunch of bingo-playing senior citizens gossiping madly over their applesauce.

"Guys, is there a reason I'm in here alone?" Spike leans his head out of the locker room.

Winnie tries not to sit bolt up right. It's just - having to allot extra time to buy the stupid muffin made her miss their usual morning meeting at her desk (the one where he sat too close and they talked about nothing and she spent too much time staring at his mouth and idly thinking that she'd like to drag him into the filing room and lock the door).

"Gotta love a keener," Sam says smirking at him.

Ed raises his eyebrows at Winnie meaningfully and then glances around. "Spike. We were just eating Jules's food."

Spike shakes his head. "You mean, _you_ were just eating Jules's food."

"Winnie brought her a muffin. Totally missed out the rest of us. Can you believe that?" He's grinning.

"What, Win, lose a bet?" Spike teases, shoots her a look that makes her mouth dry.

"See?" Jules says, busy daintily licking chocolate off the side of the bag.

"What was the bet about?" Boss asks.

Jules starts choking, Sam leaning over to tap her on the back. Ed's looking between Spike and Winnie like a feral animal scenting blood.

Winnie sighs heavily, realizes there's absolutely no way she's getting out of this intact, sees the way Spike's grinning at her and figures what exactly is the harm, it's not like it's a secret (not like anyone here can _keep_ a secret anyhow). "First dates." Catches Spike raise his eyebrows at her in a way that is not unattractive at all.

"Ah. Well." Boss smiles.

"Oh. Is this a thing we can talk about now?" Sam asks, directing his question to no one in particular.

Spike shoots Winnie a pained look.

She snorts, is trying desperately not to laugh.

"So. He took you where on your first date?"

"Ed," Spike complains.

"Hey, gotta make sure you're treating our girl right." Ed smiles at her in a way she figures is supposed to make her comfortable (thing is, she's spent a lot of time around Team One and their 'harmless hazing' and she knows when to be scared of Ed and when not to be and this is definitely one of those times to tread cautiously). "Is he? Treating you right?"

She raises her eyebrow at him, smirks, knows that he's trying to make her blush, knows how to play that game too. "Oh, very well," she says. "No complaints here."

Leah lets out a whoop, Sam and Jules dissolving into laughter.

Ed makes a face. "Please don't elaborate."

"Wasn't gonna."

Jules sighs heavily, leaning over the desk to toss the empty bag in the garbage can. "Can we possibly get back to work?"

"Oh what, you can make fun but the rest of us can't?"

"That's exactly it, Ed."

Leah laughs. "Or maybe the rest of us can and it's just you who can't."

Ed pouts, this look that's totally out of place on his face before he starts laughing. Winnie just shakes her head.

"Let's all move it, shall we?"

Winnie shoots Boss a grateful look for that one, not like she's embarrassed or anything, but still, who wants their personal business all over the place?

Spike lingers behind everyone else, rests his elbows on the desk and grins at her. "Missed you this morning. Running late?"

She quirks her lips at him, thinks it should be a bigger problem than it is, how she feels when he grins at her over the desk like that. "Had to get Jules her muffin."

"What'd she bet on exactly?"

Winnie clears her throat and glances around him in the direction of the locker room. "Why don't we just say it's about you and leave it at that?"

He suddenly looks interested. "Really."

"Don't get too excited, you're the one who asked me out first," she points out. Rolls her eyes at him because it's entirely possible that they'd been on the exact same page for years, nevermind all the bullshit she'd said before.

He laughs. "I did."

Him smiling at her is doing what it always does, making her smile back, all that stuff going on inside her chest and he just makes her feel like they're the only two people alive in the world. "So."

"So."

"So," she says again, grins up at him.

"Busy later?"

She raises her eyebrows, presses her lips together, thinks about what they'd agreed on yesterday at the end of her shift, when he still had a few more hours to go. "Possibly seeing this guy I've gone out with once."

"Oh yeah?"

Right, so him grinning at her, dimple out and eyes all crinkled, yeah, she's either going to start giggling like an idiot or she's going to explode into a huge pile of goo. "Mmm. Turned up at his place a couple nights ago, woke him up. You know how it goes." Shoots him a suggestive look because apparently, she can't stop herself and trying to remember just why she can't drag him into the filing room and lock the door doesn't appear to be a thing she can do right now.

He snickers, gives her this look like she can get a re-run of that one anytime she pleases. "I heard he wasn't complaining."

Yeah. So that's obviously the first thing they're going to do later, re-run. She covers up the flush in her cheeks with a playful, "You're not going to start talking in the third person, are you? I'll warn you now, I'm only going to get confused."

"We can't have that." He clears his throat. "So. Just so we're clear. You still good to hang out after work?" Raises his eyebrow at her.

It's like the eleventh grade all over again, right down to how her cheeks are hurting from smiling and how her stomach is making these wild swoops. "Yes." So she answers way too quickly and way too enthusiastically and she totally doesn't care.

"Yes?" She has no idea what that relieved look on his face is all about (she's just – she's a sure thing when it comes to him, basically, which probably doesn't say anything good about her but. Funnily enough, she's okay with it).

"Yes," she confirms.

He keeps smiling at her. "Okay." Clears his throat. "You uh. You mind waiting around after shift?"

"Nope." Okay Winnie, feel free to tone down that enthusiasm any time now.

"Okay then." She has no idea how much time they spend just looking at each other and it's just - he's got a good smile, is all she's saying.

"You know, they're waiting for you," she says, chews on the inside of her mouth. It's always helpful to have a reminder of what they're getting paid for here.

"Yeah, I know." Shoots her this look that makes her stupidly warm, all these visions of two nights ago and the way he looked at her in his front hallway (actually, the way he's always looked at her, if she's honest with herself. Something she'd have noticed if she hadn't been so eager to ignore it). "Guess I should go."

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Sam lean his head out of the locker room, opening his mouth to say god knows what before Jules slaps her hand over it and drags him back inside, shoots Winnie a conspiratorial look and Winnie would really like to know what in the hell the whole of Team One is doing in the men's locker room (thinks she can guess though and it just makes her snicker at what Spike is about to walk into, is a hundred percent sure he's been expecting it).

"I'll see you later."

"Okay." She grins, watches him head back to work, thinks she already can't wait for work to end.


	13. In A Wildflower

AN: I should probably apologize for the level of ridiculous fluff here but also, you know, I'm not sorry.

Giant giant _giant_ thank you to Tirsh for about a thousand things, least of which include offering to read this when I was ready to scrap the whole thing, giving me insight and answers, helping me with the accuracy of the details, offering me suggestions - and for being a generally stand-up and awesome person.

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**In A Wild Flower**

Winnie stares at him incredulously, the triangle-shaped chocolate hovering somewhere between where she had the box propped up on her stomach, and her open mouth. "Are you _kidding_?"

Spike snickers, glances back at her from where he's assembling what is eventually going to be a crib (she would rather be catching up on her PVR'd shows but she'd felt kind of bad that he'd be sitting on the floor with his drill in what is eventually going to be their kid's room and ugh okay, fine, she's transparent, Spike using power tools, she is _on board_). "What's wrong with Geddy?"

"We're not naming our kid after some guy in a rock band," she says witheringly.

"Some _guy_?" he echoes, his eyes wide. "Some g-Winnie, he's one of the greatest musicians who ever-"

She gestures with the chocolate like it'll tell him everything she thinks about naming their children after the members of Rush. "That is so not the point. What, we're going to call our other kids Alex and Neil? No. N-O."

He bursts out laughing. "I knew you loved them, really – you even know their names." He smirks at her. "And other kids, eh?"

She keeps trying to stay cautious and optimistic, see how their first attempt at parenting goes, doesn't want to write off the fact that they might just really suck at it, see if they'll even be able to have other kids but he keeps getting carried away, wants to start converting another room before she's even given birth to _this_ baby.

She rolls her eyes and bites into the chocolate she selected, makes a face, looks at it with a sigh and then drops it back in the box.

"Why don't you waste some more of those, by the way?"

She sucks chocolate and toffee off the roof of her mouth and shrugs. "I'm not wasting them – that's why I'm not throwing them out."

He stares at her. "You think someone else is going to come along and eat your half-bitten chocolate?"

She rolls her eyes. "Obviously." Hello, would she be putting it back otherwise? In fact, toffee crunch covered in chocolate may be exactly what she wants in an hour and if she tosses it out now, what's she going to do in an hour? "How is it my fault that none of them are what I'm looking for right now? Although-" she holds up a piece of paper, waves it at him, "these were hand-packed by Gloria. Just in case you were wondering."

"You know, I don't think I'd have gotten through my whole life without knowing that. Really." Grins at her as he holds one of the nails in his mouth, gets another one lined up before he starts hammering.

Winnie shifts, tries to twist a little without twisting so much that she ends up right out of this very uncomfortable chair and seriously, whose idea was it to put an uncomfortable loveseat in this stupid room? (Has this vague recollection of Spike saying it should be a rocking chair and her insisting on a loveseat. Which – oops. In her defence, she hadn't counted on weighing an extra fifteen pounds at the time and really, at this point, no chair is comfortable. She's also caught Spike online shopping for rocking chairs and she's reasonably sure they're going to end up with one anyway.)

"What is it?"

She sighs, tries not to be annoyed that he cares, even though ever since the morning sickness kicked in right at the end of the first trimester (which – unfair. Jules had assured her that since she hadn't had any before that, she was probably home free. As it turns out, Jules was wrong), he's been hovering around her like a bee. "I'm just-" she shifts, "a little bit uncomfortable." He's up and at her side in the next second and she sighs again. "Spike, I didn't mean you had to-"

"Stand up. I'll move the pillows."

"I'm okay, I'm not-"

He rolls his eyes at her and she has to admit, him standing over her like that is actually putting some very interesting thoughts in her head (not that she needs him to be standing over her to think them. Actually, ever since she's been pregnant, all she's really been craving is him and chocolate – sometimes together. So nothing actually out of the ordinary and possibly, she has no pregnancy-cravings whatsoever). She lets him take the box off her lap and then makes a face. "You realize that it's not exactly easy to just get out of this chair, right? Like-" She's about to say that all that weight she's gained is sitting right smack dab in the middle of her stomach and it's throwing her balance to shit.

He swings her legs around, gets his hands on her hips and helps her to her feet, raises his eyebrows when he hears her spine pop.

"Don't even say it," she warns.

He brushes his fingers gently against her stomach. "Wouldn't dream of it," he says before kissing her quickly on the lips but she catches the eye roll tossed in her direction, the little grin afterwards.

She stretches, takes a few steps around the room, all the bits they've done so far, the walls and the base boards, fingers the curtains. "I'm still not sure about these elephants."

"It was between those and the clowns," he reminds her patiently. "We're not having clowns."

She raises an eyebrow, turns around to hide her grin. Doesn't comment on the perceived childhood trauma that resulted in his dislike of clowns even though the thought of her fearless SRU husband in all his tac gear running from a clown makes her snicker.

"Besides what kid doesn't like elephants?"

"Maybe this one'll prefer giraffes."

Spike mutters something that sounds like 'vicious little creatures' but she's not sure and she doesn't really want to ask him if that's what she heard.

She makes a face as she sits back down, pokes at the box of chocolates mournfully. "I just don't get it," she says. "They're all I want to eat, all I've been dreaming of eating and yet, all of them taste like nothing. It's like the world is against me."

He laughs, tosses a balled up piece of paper in her direction. "Yeah, that's exactly what it is, bella. It couldn't possibly be because that junk's not good for you."

"Blame it on your kid," she mutters mutinously, like this is some kind of joke that he and their almost-due baby cooked up together. "Seriously, doesn't it feel like I've been pregnant for a hundred years now? It's getting ridiculous." She bites violently into the corner of another chocolate. Even if he doesn't think so, the swollen ankles and weird pinching in her back has gone on for _long enough_.

He snorts, drills a large screw into the corner of the frame. "Only because you mention it every hour." She sees his mouth twitch though.

"Hate you," she says conversationally. "Ugh, speaking of, you know what Pete said to me yesterday? 'Geez, Win. You're kinda packing it on there, eh?'," she says, imitating Pete's deep Newfoundland accent. "I mean, really. How rude can you be?" Who'd asked him to be standing right behind her when she'd wheeled the chair back from the desk? It's not like she could just get to her feet easily like she could before, there is a _stomach_ to take into account now and if he hadn't been standing that close, she wouldn't have had to run over his foot.

Spike looks like he's trying to hide a grin and is failing miserably. "Oh yeah?"

She rolls her eyes at him. "What an idiot." She can't keep the affection out of her tone though. Pete's been her buddy since the moment they met, she's actually and officially played wing-woman for him in the past and he's a good friend – despite all the eyebrow raises she's gotten from him (distinctly remembers one morning where he was laughing so hard he could barely get his words out and when he did get them out, it had been some derivative of 'remember when you said you didn't date cops? And now you're married to one!' and she could only roll her eyes at him because you know, he'd had a point).

"Could be worse," he says. "When my cousin had her third kid, she ballooned."

"Oh, that's nice. Ballooned?" She flings the balled up piece of paper back at him. "I'm going to warn you now, you say that to me and I'll probably chop you up into little pieces and hide you in the walls."

"You gonna roll a five or an eight before you do that?" he fires back, gives her this affectionate look.

She shakes her head, grinning. "How do you always know?" Doesn't seem to matter if it's Jumanji or Die Hard and one time it had even been Pirates of the Caribbean – and not the clean version.

He drills another long screw in. "It's a tough job, amore mio but-"

"Oh please," she says, tries not to smile. There's a comfortable pause and she leans her head against her hand, tries to stop thinking about distracting him from what he's doing.

"Speaking of. What's the name of the kid in that? The one who gets turned into an animal? Is it Peter?"

She stares at him in horrified silence for a moment. "We are not naming our kid _Pete_," she says finally. "No. He'll never let me forget it."

He snickers.

She clears her throat. "Um. Not to throw something crazy out there. But. What if it's a girl?" Because so far? So far, they've only thought about names they're going to put on the birth certificate if this kid turns out to be a boy and even then, it's not like they've narrowed it down.

"Uh." He drills in several screws really quick. "Joan? Joni?"

"Like Jett? Mitchell?" She sighs heavily. "Is there any way you can make suggestions that aren't aged out rock stars?"

"Geddy is _not_ aged-"

"Maybe we should just call it Spike," she says musingly. "Girl or boy. It's totally unisex. What do you think?" She's like, halfway kidding. Mostly.

He opens and closes his mouth for a few seconds before he rolls his eyes at her. "I think we should open up that baby name book and look through it properly at some point before we're stuck with The Kid."

She snickers. "All those names just started sounding the same."

He looks like he wants to laugh, very mildly points out, "You read through one column."

She makes a face. Even if it _is_ true, she doesn't see what that has to do with anything. "You didn't hear anything you liked either."

"You were screaming them in my ear." She notices that he doesn't say anything about how he'd laughed so hard at her hollering out names that he'd nearly fallen off the bed.

She raises her eyebrow and shrugs unapologetically. "That's probably the only way we're going to hear our kid's name anyhow. It's got to sound good being shouted through the house."

"You think we're going to have a kid we're always going to be yelling at?" He pauses from what he's doing, drill still raised.

"You don't?" she says disbelievingly, arches her eyebrow. "This kid showed up out of the blue, do you remember that? And if they don't give a crap about how we were expecting them a year from now, how can you really expect them not to push every boundary ever?" She can't quite keep the warmth out of her tone, thinks if this kid had wanted to show up a year early with a sibling and a friend, she'd still have a hard time keeping the smile off her face. "Plus what about all that stuff with the ultrasounds? You think it's normal that every time we should be able to find out the sex, the kid does something like cross its legs or move the cord around?"

He stares at her with his mouth slightly open and then snorts. "That is the most insane-"

"You probably don't want to finish that sentence. You know. Pregnancy, hormones. I might cry," she warns him, giggling through her words.

He bursts out laughing. "Can't have that." He grins at her, eyes all bright and okay, does their child really need a crib? Surely they can just line a drawer with blankets, it's not like babies remember things like that, right? (It's just – come _on_, the tools and how his forearms keep flexing and how he keeps smiling at her and okay, does she really need an excuse to get her husband naked? She really hopes not because her excuses are looking weaker by the second.)

"Okay, seriously, I've gotta know...are you going to be doing that all night?"

He rolls his eyes at her. "I wouldn't still be sitting here – if someone hadn't kept sending me to get them stuff."

"Like what?" she asks incredulously, already snickering at the martyred expression on his face.

"Those chocolates, for starters."

She presses her lips together, is trying really hard not to laugh. "You asked me if I wanted anything and I said, 'oh, could you bring up those chocolates Leah brought over' and you brought up-I don't even know what. What was it? Bacon? And then-"

He snickers. "How exactly was I supposed to know that Leah-"

"And then you offered to go back downstairs and obviously, I _reluctantly_ said-"

"Reluctantly?" he echoes. "I'm quite sure you pouted at me like you were doing your best impression of Sadie Braddock and then-"

She rolls her eyes. "Oh so now it's my fault that you're such a giant-"

"And then," he says, raising his voice slightly, still grinning at her, "you said-"

She laughs, cuts him off. "Well it doesn't matter what I said," she says airily. "All of it stemming from the fact that you can't find a box of chocolates. Am I right?"

He sighs. "You're right." He smiles at her, eyes scanning over her face and arms and then looking concerned. "Win, seriously. Are you sure you're not hungry? I can make you something."

She rolls her eyes. "Oh my _god_, you are so annoying." She sighs. "Yes. Yes, I'm sure. Because I'm pregnant, I'm not in a full body cast so if there _was_ something I wanted, I could just-"

"You should be staying off your feet."

She stares at him. "I-what?" Usually, she can at least follow his arguments and it's not like she really wanted to climb a ladder seven months pregnant and dust the light fixtures but still. That was at least an argument that made sense to her, is all she's saying.

"I don't know. I think I heard that somewhere." He laughs. "What? I did!"

"My feet are fine," she says, ignores the fact that she really wouldn't know, how she hasn't laid eyes on them in weeks. Assumes they're still attached. "I'm fine. Everything's fine."

"The doctor already said you could stand to gain-"

She sighs heavily. "Stand to gain? Are you aware the size of this stomach is probably going to double before I actually give birth?"

"But you still-"

"I'm in maternity jeans," she points out. "What more do you want?" She feels like she's got the grace of a very large graceless creature and it's like every time she gets used to her new size, her stomach gets bigger and she's turned around and smacked into so many door frames at this point that she just wants to give up. (That said, there have been significant improvements to the size of her breasts, this kid has made some solid changes to that and she's not complaining, not at all, has spent a large portion of her time standing half-naked in front of the mirror and telling Spike to come look too.)

"You were wearing your regular clothes until a month ago," he counters.

"Spike," she says with a sigh, doesn't know how to explain using elastic bands to do up her jeans underneath a stomach she didn't used to have just so she wouldn't have to chance those disgusting 'maternity slacks' her mother had sent her (it had been Jules who'd pointed her in a better direction and actually, Winnie likes these stretchy jeans with the panelling over the stomach so much that she might just keep wearing them even after she's given birth and maybe beyond that too), "come on. What do you want me to do? I'm sitting here going through a box of chocolate the size of my head and-"

"You should be eating proper food."

She sighs again, patiently. "I am eating proper food. Remember? I ate dinner with you. And yes. Okay. Possibly I threw up half of it but that's not all _my_ fault, I should have known better than to eat that much with this one mushing my stomach up into my chest. How the hell much longer do we have to go?" It's just – it would be really great if she could get through a full-sized meal in one sitting, and she knows it's a small price to pay but still.

"Say it."

She stares at him, figures she's probably got a really silly expression on her face. "Say what?"

"Say that you didn't mean that word and you take it back and that parents make mistakes too."

"Are you kidding? For hell?" Dammit, she's going to murder Sam for giving him this ridiculous idea in the first place. And seriously, trust Sam to make a (stupid) joke and Spike to take it seriously – yes, this is definitely Sam's fault.

"Winnie. Our child can hear-"

"Don't even say it."

"I'm just saying that-"

"Spike. I swear to god."

He laughs, sets the finally-finished crib upright. "So? What do you think?" He takes a seat beside her, lifts up her feet and drops them into his lap, leans his hand across and rests it on her stomach. Looks very slightly unnerved. "Is that a-"

She sighs, is used to the kicking and the moving and the pressing on her bladder, tugs up the bottom of her shirt. "Hand? Yeah." She rubs at the spot thoughtfully. "It's like something right out of Alien, isn't it?"

He shoots her a baleful look, leaning closer. "Hi little peanut – don't listen to your mother, she's clearly not been medicated today." She takes in the look on his face, can't stop herself from smiling too. "Something out of Alien," he mutters. "She was kidding, you hear me?"

Winnie rolls her eyes, makes a face at how all the movement's suddenly increased (this kid knows Spike's voice, she has no idea how it even hears anything through all that amniotic fluid and whatever but. Kid still knows. Spike started reading out loud four months in and she still thinks they should have stuck with Mozart biographies and maybe Harry Potter but it's too late now – she's a little worried their kid's going to spring out and already know how to assemble a pipe bomb). "You don't think that's kinda freaky?"

His hand is warm on her skin. "I think it's kinda amazing," he says, shoots her that little smile and she feels her heart jump, kind of the same way their kid's jumping. "Want me to rub your back when we go downstairs?"

"You make it very difficult to stay annoyed at you," she says, eyes narrowed teasingly.

"Part of my charm," he says, leans over to kiss her when she rolls her eyes at him. Motions at the crib. "So? What do you think?"

She grins at him. "Wow. I didn't know you could build things!" she says sarcastically. He's good with his hands, power tools and bombs and guns – actually, now that she thinks about it, he's _really _good with his hands and not in the way that has anything at all to do with building things or taking them apart. (The crib _does_ look pretty great though and she still thinks it was madness for him to reinforce the bottom the way he did but he'd done his research and she'd done hers and there's just no point in arguing with him sometimes.) "It looks perfect."

"Just one of my many talents."

She nudges him in the chest with her foot, smiles when he catches playfully at her ankle, lets out a sigh of happiness when his fingers press against her heel and then along her instep. "Tell me. Can we possibly talk about your other talents?" Not that this isn't one of those things he's talented at but, you know, eyes on the prize.

He raises his eyebrows, smirks at her. "Wow, again? Okay. You know, I could get used to this part."

"You shouldn't," she advises with a grin. "Pretty soon all you'll be hearing are the dulcet cries of a baby."

"I'd rather be hearing the cries of-"

She shoots him a slack-jawed glare. "Seriously? Seriously."

He laughs, leans over her to brush a kiss against her lips before he moves, swings her up into his arms and she shrieks in surprise (has really not been able to move that quickly in at least a month now and seriously, does he _always_ need to be showing off? So inconvenient that she likes it). He sighs patiently. "I'm not going to drop you."

"…I know that."

He rolls his eyes at her, nuzzles playfully at her neck and starts carrying her into their bedroom. She's giggling, clinging to him and when she leans over to flip off the light, she glimpses painted walls and a white crib right before she closes her eyes and kisses him.


	14. Sun That Lights The Day: Part 1 of 2

AN: Working through my fear that I've lost all understanding of the characters and trying something a little different here - actually, a lot of somethings different. Just, you know. Preparing you.

And if you've been offering me some friendly pushing and/or encouragement (you know, over PM, DM or another medium entirely), I thank you for it!

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**Sun That Lights The Day: Part 1/2**

It's like, one second, they're listening to Spike talk them through what he's doing, a mass of wires and filaments that none of them understand the way he does. Spring's right on the horizon, air smells clean. She's mid-sentence, giving him information from the profile.

In the next moment, there's just nothing.

She's aware that her heart rate's changed, sniper breathing right out the window, no four counts anywhere to be found. She knows there was an explosion, knows that there's dust in the air, knows the earth rattled hard under her boots. She can feel Sam's eyes on her, turns to face him with difficulty.

He's got this look on his face like he's going to be sick or he's going to touch her and if he touches her, _she's_ going to be sick. "No." No. They already _did_ this once. "Jules-"

"_No_. No. Boss, did he get out? Ed, did you have eyes on him?"

Boss doesn't answer her.

Ed does though. "Negative." His voice is completely even and if Jules didn't know him like she knows a part of her own self, she'd never have heard it, that hitch in his breathing right before he answered.

"All I've got on this side is debris." Leah sounds like she's reading from a teleprompter for the very first time, words over-enunciated, just a little too clear.

"Boss?" Jules says again.

He still doesn't reply and she wants to go pound her fist against that stupid truck, find out why in the hell he's not answering her and then she hears his voice in her headset and she freezes, figures the rest of them do too, none of them thinking any other way but straight, only focusing on the obvious because that's what they've been trained to do.

"How are you doing, Winnie?"

Sam does reach out and touch her now, hand clamping down on the top of her arm like he's drowning. Jules reaches up blindly and covers his fingers with hers, suddenly realizes that everything she's seeing is wavering. Sam's fingers tighten on her skin, a shade away from painful and she can see again and she can't-

"I'm here, Boss."

And Jules thinks everything she hears in their dispatcher's voice is going to make her tumble right to her knees. She knows, knows too well what it's like, and the blast was loud, rumbled right through the cement and it looks like a little toy house that someone just came along and put their foot through, everything filled with smoke and dust, like they've been transported right into the centre of another city (and _why_ is she thinking about this at all, has to blame Spike and his taste in movies but part of her is waiting for Bane to come leering out of the shadows).

"Okay. Okay. We're going to need you to send out Fire and EMS for us. Can you do that?"

"Already done." She sounds dull and flat and nothing like how Winnie usually sounds.

Jules thinks it's shock. Wonders if Winnie's eyes are glassy.

"That's good. Thank you, Winnie. Team One, I need to know if we can move in there. Eddy?"

Jules hears Ed take a deep breath, can hear him reciting tac plans in her head. "I don't know."

"What was it?" Leah demands. "Was it a bomb? A-a mine? Is there a chance that he-that he-"

Jules can't hear anymore, she won't, pulls the ear piece out and looks at Sam. "I want to get him out. I want to get him out of there now." It's stupid but she's thinking of how she and Sam ran into Spike and Win in the parking lot this morning, just a few hours ago, how Winnie had been laughing and Spike had been tickling her and how she and Sam had stood there and watched the show until Sam had cleared his throat (sounding remarkably like Ed) and how Spike and Winnie had stopped dead like two teenagers caught making out behind the gym. It had made Jules laugh all the way through work out.

Sam's so pale, eyes stark against his skin, so blue that she almost thinks she can see things that aren't this, aren't nightmares.

"Sam-"

"I'm going to go in."

"I'm going with you." Automatic reaction, always the two of them.

"No you're not," he says firmly. "It's not stable. It can't be. One of us is going. It's going to be me."

"What if there's another one?" she asks and her voice is shaking in a way that she's finding completely unacceptable. She takes a deep breath, puts her earpiece back in. "Your bomb disposal skills are-"

"Both of you can forget it," Leah says sharply. "I'm going in. I'm closest."

"Leah!" Boss snaps.

"Yeah, Boss?"

"We need to wait for-"

"No offence," she interrupts, voice all steady, "but we're going to wait for the Fire Department? While I'm standing right here? It's just going to waste time."

And Jules can picture the set of her jaw, the kind of woman who ran towards flames instead of away from them.

There's a pause. "Be careful."

Jules can hear sirens howling somewhere far away, outside the periphery of right here, and all she can focus on is Sam's face in front of hers. Idly, she hears Ed giving Leah instructions, the two of them talking strategy, this edge to his voice where he's telling her that if she goes in there and doesn't come back out, he's going to kill her.

Jules knows that Sam's leading her closer to them, she can see the top of Ed's head just over the hedge and she steels her whole body when they round it. She just catches the bottom of Leah's boots before the other woman's gone and Ed turns and looks at them, lines on his face like he just aged a hundred years.

"There's still a chance," he says and his voice doesn't crack and Jules thinks that that chance? It's more than other people they've lost had, clings to that hard.

"I shouldn't have let him go alone," Jules says, mutters it so quietly that she doesn't think anyone else is going to hear her.

Except Ed has the hearing of a wild animal and he shakes his head sharply. "Don't do that, Jules. Don't. You followed protocol. And we are not debriefing out here. You hear me?"

Sam's grip on her elbow is almost painful, jerks her back into the job and she nods firmly, ignores the way something in Ed's eyes crumples a little, reaches out and squeezes his forearm, gives him something to hold onto because Sam is what she holds onto.

Time does a weird thing, where she doesn't know if it's been minutes or hours and when Leah doesn't find him right away, Sam's fingers tighten on her elbow. All she's thinking is that Spike's supposed to be standing there making jokes and it doesn't make any sense that he isn't doing either of those things. Four extremely large firemen are trying to tell Ed that the building's structure is compromised and what does he mean they let one of their guys go in before Fire even got there and Ed mutters something rudely under his breath about it not being 'a guy' and oh well, it's done now. Any other day and Jules would be smirking.

She barely hears Leah exclaim something, something about breathing and blood and head injuries, slides the back of her hand against Sam's, forces herself to keep breathing so that he will too, knows he's watching her pulse and is mimicking what he sees so she slows it right down, hears his breathing slow down too.

"Oww, fuck," she hears in her headset and she feels light-headed, like she's going to do something completely embarrassing and pass out. (It's relief, she realizes. The violent kind.)

"That's what you get for messing up your wires." That's Leah. Leah who sounds so relieved and so shaky that she doesn't even sound like Leah at all, how calm and placid she is usually.

"Didn't mess it up. Asshole set it wrong. These people, I fucking swear."

"Hey hey, now. Watch your language, this is going right into the transcripts, you know." Boss doesn't sound like himself either, like he might need to clear his throat a few dozen times.

"Sorry," Spike mutters, doesn't sound sorry. "Leah, can I use your phone for a second?"

She snorts and Jules finds herself smiling despite everything that's happening right here because she can picture the look on Leah's face, all older sister, another piece of Spike found in someone else. "Yeah. Don't move too much though. I've just gotten the bleeding under control."

Jules can barely hear his side of the conversation, knows it's Winnie, thinks if it was her sitting on the other end of a phone in a building half a city away, she wouldn't even-

Spike's telling her something Jules can't even follow, catches Ed rolling his eyes and it makes her smile, this miniscule bit of normality, Ed teasing Spike about Winnie in the early days because he'd always get such a good response, a blush or an eye roll or a light shove into the wall. She can hear Leah moving pieces of rubble.

"I think I can drag him," Leah says more to herself than anyone. "At least part way."

"Wow, that sounds fun," Spike mutters.

"You sure we shouldn't wait for EMS?"

"That's stupid," Spike pipes up and Jules can tell from the expression on Ed's face that Ed wasn't asking him. "This whole building could cave in. My spine's fine, Leah."

"Yeah? What about your head?"

"Still attached," Spike says cheekily and Ed lets out a grudging chuckle. Jules wants to laugh too, feels the hysteria way down in her stomach.

And then she hears something sliding across cement and Spike inhales sharply.

"Sorry." Leah's voice is all concern.

"S'okay, Leah. It's fine. Just. Let's get out of here." Jules wonders if he's full of shit, if it's for Winnie's benefit, on the other end of Leah's headset.

Leah chooses a different path for their exit, a firefighter down to her bones, knows broken buildings better than any of them, knows about stability and studs and load-bearing walls, comes out with Spike holding tight to her shoulder, almost dragging him, her arm around him and there's blood all over his face, chalky white dust too, all over his uniform and Jules covers her mouth with both her hands. Dimly, she sees Boss open the door to the command truck, thinks he aged a hundred years too.

Spike takes one look at the three of them standing there, at Boss on the steps and smiles real big (Jules would be able to see how fake it is from a mile away, not like she hasn't known him for years here, honestly). "Nothing you guys need to worry about," he says. "Just a scratch."

Leah snorts rudely, this look on her face like she half wants to let go and drop him on his ass, see how much of a scratch it is then. Jules nudges at Sam a little, lets the paramedics get through, and she has to turn away a little, focuses only on Spike's face when they're cutting his uniform off of him. His breathing's all shallow and she thinks he's got some broken ribs in there, probably a dislocated shoulder too, if the tightening of his features when his arm gets probed is anything to go by.

He smiles up at her, raises his other hand and touches her forearm. "I'm okay."

"Yeah well," she says, thinks her voice is trembling and she doesn't care, not at all. "That's only for now. And it's not me you have to worry about. Winnie's going to kill you."

Sam laughs, this funny laugh that doesn't sound like a laugh at all, like it's either that or he's going to make some other kind of sound. "She's right, buddy. You'd better hope she stops at making you sleep on the couch."

Spike makes a face. "She wouldn't-ow, _Jesus_, seriously?"

"It's broken, Officer, and-"

"Yeah well, great, stop touching it!"

"This is what you get for letting a building collapse on you," Ed says, leans down and squeezes Spike's other shoulder.

"Letting?!" he echoes incredulously.

Leah lets out a slightly high-pitched noise. They follow the paramedics and the stretcher and Boss leans forward, grasps Spike's chin in his hand and shakes his head. "That's going to scar."

"Who doesn't love one of those?" Spike mutters sourly and Jules nearly laughs because if there's one thing she knows Spike hates, it's people crowding around and giving him the wrong kind of attention and then she wants to cry, that there's even the wrong attention to give him.

She glances up and sees Boss looking carefully at her and they take a few steps back from everyone else, flip their radios off. "Jules, I think you should go with him," he says quietly. "I'm going to go back to HQ and get Winnie."

"She okay?" Her concern shifts, thinks about what it would mean if it was Sam, just gone, no voice on the comm., alone with no one to check on him.

"She is. Want to make sure we stay that way. Okay?"

Jules thinks about that, how their family has grown and shifted, all of them falling into roles that overlap, thinks if Spike is like a son, then Winnie's like the girl next door, the one he's always stared just a little too long at, the one they always knew he'd fall in love with. "Okay." She clambers up into the ambulance, smiles at Sam and wonders about all the ways that he knows everything she's saying without her even opening her mouth.

"Meet you there," he says, and his eyes finish it off.

Spike's drowsy, whatever they gave him making him spout out crap she can't even follow for several minutes, even the paramedic next to her trying to hide a smile. "Jules?"

"Yeah?" She leans closer, brushes her fingers through his hair.

"Winnie okay?"

She has no idea how to answer that, thinks that the last thing Winnie's going to be until she sees him is okay. "Boss has gone to get her. They're going to meet us at the hospital. Sam, Ed and Leah too."

"Think this'll make her change her mind?"

She stares at him.

"Cause her Dad. Only. Got shot."

She has to swallow several times, get the lump out of her throat before she can answer him. "No. No I don't think she's going to change her mind." See, Jules knows a few things about changing her mind and she knows Winnie Camden and she doesn't think Winnie can compartmentalize the same way (it's the only way she could stop her and Sam, and even then, it never really stopped, just got pushed into a room with no windows and so she'd learned to build a door). "I uh." She snorts. "I don't think she's ever changing her mind, Spike."

His eyes fly open and he grins suddenly, the first time she's seen him look like himself since Leah hauled him outside. "Yeah? Hope not. Think I'm done."

"Done with what?" She's still stroking her fingers through his hair, has to lean closer to catch what he says next.

"Think she's it for me."

Her fingers stall, just for a second and then she finds herself smiling, tears in her eyes even though the only time she's ever cried with her vest still on is the day they lost Lew and they didn't lose anyone today. "Good. That's good."

"Don't go telling her that though. Don't want her going and getting a big head."

Jules rolls her eyes at the incredibly lame attempt at humour and then spontaneously presses a kiss to the part of his forehead that's not covered in blood and gauze. "Wouldn't dream of it."

When they get to the hospital, she follows the stretcher as far as she can go and then she turns around, finds Sam waiting behind her, throws herself into his arms, doesn't give a single shit about protocol, all the things they decided when they chose _them_. He catches her, slides his hand up her back to her neck, holds her tight.

She breathes in his familiar scent, how different he feels against her in kevlar, resolutely doesn't let out any of the tears that she's holding back. "I love you," she says, raises her chin and kisses him. "I love you." It comes out all defiant and she almost wants to laugh at herself.

"Love you," he whispers in her ear. "Always."

She leans against his side and he's strong against her as he slides his arm around her waist and leads her to where the rest of the team is waiting. Leah's drumming her fingers against the arm rests of the chair she's sitting in, Ed pacing back and forth in this five foot square. Jules clears her throat, hands Leah back her phone. She did her best to clean the blood off of it, knows she didn't get it all. Also knows that Leah won't care.

"He okay?"

"Conscious," she answers. "Think they gave him something good in the ambulance cause I couldn't follow half of what he was saying."

Ed snorts, turns to look at her and then slides into a chair. "If all of this was for the morphine…"

Sam laughs, short and just for a second but it feels like everything is going to go back to normal, like they'll all get to walk away from this one, too.

None of them move when Boss walks in, Winnie beside him and Jules sees the gap between them, thinks that Winnie's probably going to lose it if any of them touch her and it won't be the crying kind of losing it (Spike told her once that Winnie had a temper, the only one of them who ever saw it, way back before they ever even got together, "fuse as long as Yonge St but if you fry that, it's totally your funeral", how he'd sounded equal parts impressed and gleeful about it).

"Have they said anything yet?" Boss asks and Jules sees Winnie look at him sharply, sees her taking these deep breaths, arms crossed over her uniform and Jules knows Sam sees it too because he sits down, doesn't offer Winnie his chair.

"Not yet," Ed answers. "Think they're still checking him over."

Jules is still looking at Winnie, at how her lips are pressed together, how her face is pinched and white, this hard look on it, how she's still standing. Winnie's looking at Leah and Jules follows her gaze. There's a smudge of blood on Leah's neck from where Spike leaned against her as she hauled him out of the building.

None of them say anything and Winnie stands in the exact same position until the doctor comes out to talk to them, still, like she's made of stone.

Jules doesn't hear one word the doctor says, gets everything she needs to know from the way Winnie's arms drop to her side, how the other woman leans back against the wall, bites down on her bottom lip hard like she's trying to bite through it. How Winnie looks all shaky, relief painted all across her face, right down to her chin.

"That's good," Boss says to no one in particular. "So as soon as they move him we can go in and see him. That's good."

Winnie looks at him like she can't see any part of this at all that's good and Jules sees the moment that Winnie realizes that it could certainly be worse and it's Sam that stands up, leans back against the wall next to her, talks to her softly, things none of them can hear and Winnie doesn't wind up and hit him and Jules thinks he's got to be saying something right. (It took Jules a long time to see it clearly, the way Sam's only ever asked her to be careful, would never ask her to give this up. No man ever understood it before, is all.)

They all go, take up the whole hallway outside the room Spike's in and Jules thinks all of them standing out there sag against the wall in relief when they hear him make an absolutely ridiculous and slightly inappropriate joke, even though he's slurring a little, and Winnie huffs and tells him, "Careful – there's nowhere for you to hide."

Winnie's got tear stains on her cheeks when she comes out but the hard look on her face is gone and she hugs Leah fiercely and doesn't say a word.

Jules swallows hard, Sam sliding his hand into hers and she takes a deep breath, smiles up at him, squeezes his fingers hard.


	15. Sun That Lights The Day: Part 2 of 2

AN: I suspect that if you're not up to speed on your early 90s cartoons, you might find bits of this flying right over your head. Also, warnings for the copious amount of cheese.

If you've taken the time to review or sent me encouraging PMs/DMs, thank you so so much! And if you've been reviewing anonymously, maybe I could convince you to sign up for an account so I can say thanks? (Kast64, I'm looking at you ;)).

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******Sun That Lights The Day: Part 2/2**

When Spike wakes up, whole body aching and his mouth dry, there's a funny haze over what he's seeing and he figures it's the last of the morphine wearing off. Feels it a second later, knows it definitely has.

The fingers of his left hand twitch and he thinks his whole arm feels better with his shoulder where it's supposed to be. Little bit of relief even if it feels like he came out on the wrong side of a bar fight. Sees dark hair right next to his arm and then the rest of him feels a little bit better too.

He turns his hand over, barely touches her hair and Winnie bolts up, so fast he's almost startled.

"Are you okay? Do you need something?"

He takes in the slightly frantic look in her eyes and then reaches the hand of his uninjured arm out towards her. "M'fine. Just woke up. Thirsty."

"I'll see if you can have water." And she's gone before he can say they'll just wait for the nurse, that he's not like, _deathly_ thirsty, that it's not urgent. He doesn't remember Winnie saying she was going to stay here all night and a glance outside tells him that it's dark o'clock and everyone else in this room is sleeping so-

"Mr. Scarlatti, we need some water, do we?"

"We do," he says, grimaces a little as he attempts to adjust himself, tries to sit up a little and ends up biting off a curse. "Uh. When can I go home, by the way?"

The nurse – nametag reads Jean and the colour of her hair makes him think of Jean Grey which then makes him think about Cyclops and the invention of mutants who never actually existed and seriously, _what_ is in his IV bag? – snorts. "You'll need to talk to the doctor for that one. I'm going to take a wild guess and assume it won't be tonight." She takes his vitals, shines this completely obnoxious light in his eyes and he does his best not to projectile vomit. He's already thinking about how long he's going to be out of the field, how long it'll be before he can get back to work and that concussions are weird little beasts. "Any pain?"

"No," he answers too quickly. Hears Winnie's snort.

Jean sighs. "And they say doctors make the worst patients. Winnie, he should be fine to drink some water now. There's cups in the bathroom." Winnie disappears and Jean leans a little closer. "What do you need, Michelangelo? On a scale of one to ten, how bad's the pain? We can get you on a fentanyl patch or morphine."

He makes a face at Michelangelo. It always makes him think of his Pa, of being in trouble (or being a cop). "It's a two," he says through his teeth, supposes on someone's scale, it could be a two. Ed's scale, maybe. It's not like he's lying.

She raises an eyebrow at him, looks so much like Jules that he braces himself for an eye roll. "Mm hm. Okay. Well, I'll get you something for the swelling in that shoulder. You need anything else, you let us know. No point suffering in silence. And I'm sure your girl's not going to want to see you in pain."

"Low blow," he says with a grin.

She shrugs unapologetically. "However I can get you to see sense."

He nods. "It's really okay. Not so bad."

"Let me guess, you've had worse?" She sighs again. "Okay. But I'm serious – if it gets worse, you need to tell us."

"Copy that," he says with what he hopes is a winning smile. Figures she sees right through him.

She leaves and he tries not to let his hand shake when Winnie hands him the cup. Sees that she only filled it halfway and wonders if, maybe, she doesn't really need him to protect her from this.

"How bad is it really?"

He makes a face. "Like a seven and a half?" Because, you know. It's entirely likely that on someone else's scale, this could also be a seven and a half. Or a fifteen, whatever.

She rolls her eyes at him. "You realize that whenever you give me numbers like that, I inflate them, right?" She's gazing at him with this _look_ on her face and he so doesn't want to but he figures they're going to have to talk about this and that now seems as good a time as any.

"I'm sorry you had to hear any of that."

"Any of what?" She's tugging the blankets over him more evenly and he wants to reach out and catch her chin, look right into her eyes so she can't hide.

"Winnie. Can you stop for a second?" He steels himself, shifts over a little and it hurts, a whole shit ton of pain right up his left side, bright and hot. He grits his teeth and ignores it. "Seriously. Come here." He tugs her closer, till she's sitting on the edge of the bed, barely touching him at all. Tugs some more until he can feel the warmth from her thigh, figures that's about as good as he can do right now. "You okay?"

She shrugs, looks so remarkably unaffected. "Mm. Well. For about half an hour today, I thought you were dead. Other than that, I'm doing great."

He grins at her in spite of himself, that flippant tone, thinks if she's joking even a little bit, it can't be that bad. "Yeah, I-"

"No," she says, shakes her head at him. "No. Don't. Don't say anything. I can't talk about this right now."

He stares at her, sees her mouth tremble ever so slightly, how she's staring at a spot just above his head, thinks maybe it's actually pretty bad and seriously, you'd think years of SRU would have gotten him to the right answer but sometimes when it comes to her, he just has no idea at all (and truth be told? He kind of likes that. A little. Not that anyone needs to know that, not at all). "Win, don't. I'm sorry-"

"You didn't _do_ anything," she says, voice not right, like she's holding back tears and _god_, he's going to make her _cry_ and like, what in the fuck is he going to say to make her _stop_? "It's not like you did anything wrong. I'm being _stupid_-

"You're not," he interrupts. "You're not stupid." They're all helpless sometimes, no matter how good they are, there's always a moment when it's not good enough. And he's lived long enough to know that sometimes, everything falls to shit no matter what you do, that's just how it is. But also, he's never going to be in that position, it's never going to be her on the other side of the headset, in his ear one second and gone the next and it's so incredibly selfish but he's _glad._

She looks like she's going to protest, like she's still going to cry and he just doesn't know what to- "Spike-"

Not like he doesn't know that if it hadn't been for Jules and her profile-well. It would probably be a moot point because he'd be lying in the morgue. He clears his throat. "I know. I thought it was over for a second. Saw those wires, realized what had happened. Thought I wasn't getting out." He was scared too, is the point he's trying to make, a different kind of scared than what Winnie lived through but fear's fear.

A tear slides down her cheek, just one and he wonders what in the hell he did to ever get her to give him a second look, all that strength she has that he'll never be able to match, to sign on for something knowing that the odds of it going south are just a little bit higher than they are for other people (Winnie always rolls her eyes at him, says if odds were a hundred percent fool-proof, he'd be able to beat her at poker).

Raises his hand even though it hurts, squeezes her fingers. "You having second thoughts?" He wouldn't blame her, not at all. Would probably even understand it.

She glares at him and he wants to simultaneously laugh and like, cower a little, thinks he may have just reached her very last nerve. "_No_. No. I'm not _fucking_ having second thoughts," she hisses and her tone's all abrupt and he's possibly a tiny bit grateful for his injuries right now because it means she probably won't scream at him.

"I'm just saying I'd understand-"

"Spike, I don't give a shit what you understand or you don't understand," she says, leaning closer. Her eyes are blazing and her hair's a little wild and he can see the freckles sprinkled across her nose. "You scared me. That's it. I'm not going to cut and run because I got _scared_. That's not how we work. I thought you knew that."

"Of course I know that-"

"Then shut up," she mutters rudely but she clutches his fingers tightly and her bottom lip trembles for a second, so quick that if he didn't know better, he'd swear it hadn't happened.

He clears his throat, raises his other hand and touches her face. "I love you. Like. I just-"

"I _know_ that, you don't have to-"

"Now who needs to shut up?" He smiles at her, has this clear thought like she's possibly the most beautiful person he's ever seen up close, wants to kiss her in the worst way. "I need you to know that I will always do everything that it's possible for me to do to come home to you. You hear me?"

"You can't control everything," she says, swallows hard and then clears her throat. "Sometimes shit happens."

"It does." You know. Because. Lew. Shouldn't even have been there and now he's gone and Spike isn't and life has got a fucking funny sense of humour sometimes. "But I'm still going to do everything I can."

(She's still looking at him and really, he could spend forever just looking back.) "I thought you were gone," she says and her voice cracks. It's steady when she speaks again though, completely even. "And I just thought, great. Now I have to spend the rest of my life missing the shit out of him."

He's vaguely aware that all the pain that he was feeling before is dulled and now it's something in his chest, same as when he lost Lew, when he had to get up the next morning and remember that he was living in a world without his best friend in it. "No guarantees." He shakes his head at her, feels so incredibly sad that what he's giving her isn't remotely good enough. "It's the job. No guarantees."

"Yeah? Well I want some," she says petulantly, this edge of steel to her voice, and he thinks isn't it funny that she can look like a princess but be a solider underneath. "I want you to always come home to me. And it _sucks_ because I-"

"There's never going to be anyone else for me to come home to," he says, knows it's not what she meant but it's all he can give her, the only assurance he has. "It's-there's only ever going to be you."

"_Spike_-"

"I know. I know that it's not good enough. And I'm _sorry_." He just looks at her, how her lips are slightly parted, breath stuttering and a little shallow. Thinks that he wouldn't have given it up for his father because his father had asked. But he might for her because she never has. Thinks about how circular the reasoning is and how she's never going to make him choose.

"No. No. I. Spike. It's good enough. It is. I just-yeah." Sniffs and looks away from him, takes a deep breath before she looks back. "Yeah. And if you could try not to do that to me like, ever, that would be great."

He thinks about seeing his team's locators go down on the screen, thinks about what it must have been like for her, hearing that blast and then just nothing. Shakes his head. "I love you. And it's so annoying because those words don't even come close to what I'm trying to say. But. I mean it."

She snorts. "Yeah, me too. Love you. Even if you were gone today. I still would."

"Please come here," he says, kisses her as soon as she's close enough. It's just - well, all those people touting the fact that you only live once have got it totally fucking backwards; he gets to live every single day.

She slides her arms around him, buries her face in his neck and it hurts to hold her but not enough that he's going to let her go and he's always known that the way he felt about her wasn't the way he'd felt about other girls, in other relationships, has always sort of vaguely figured that this is the kind of thing that wasn't going to end but this time, the thought's real clear, feels like something warm is settling into his veins, a whole life with her, and he kisses her hair and her temple, thinks he should feel guilty that she's crying, hot tears against his skin but all he feels is glad that he didn't die today.

Her eyes are dry when she pulls back and he winces as he shifts, everything stiff. She smiles, exhausted and a little watery but it's familiar, the thing that he first noticed about her, all those years ago before he realized he'd gone and fallen in love with the girl behind the desk.

She sees the wince, takes a deep breath like she's willing herself to be over her tears and says, "Okay. Morphine time."

"No 'e'," he says weakly and she stares at him and then bursts out laughing, pretty, tinged with just a little hysteria. (He's always loved to make her laugh.)

"Such a complete and total nerd," she mutters but she reaches out and touches him, fingers gentle against his face.

"Yeah? Well you knew what I meant so what's that make you?" he shoots back, grinning.

She leans out the door, waves at someone he assumes is at the nurses' station and then glances at him. "Here's a confession for you – when I first found out what your real name was, I so wanted to ask you if you liked pizza and finished every sentence with 'cowabunga'."

He laughs, ignores how much it kills every little part of his body and is still laughing when Winnie slips back into the chair beside his bed, presses a kiss to his hand and the painkillers start to take effect. He raises his eyebrows at her. "So. Michelangelo was your favourite huh?"

She snorts. "I never said that. Leonardo was my favourite."

He rolls his eyes, smiles at her and he's so tired all of a sudden. Almost doesn't want to close his eyes. "No way. Leonardo? Way to pick the old boring guy."

She grins, leans up and kisses him gently. "Go to sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."

"You should go home," he slurs.

She rolls her eyes. "Don't tell me what to do," she says sweetly, all stubborn underneath it, kisses him again.

"Okay," he says agreeably because, you know, drugs and stuff. Plus, it's a losing battle anyhow.

He's vaguely aware of her leaning her head on her elbow to look at him and she's the last thing he sees as he falls into a drug-induced sleep (thinks it won't be so bad if he wakes up and she's the first thing he sees too).


	16. Where The Road Begins And Ends

AN: If you're at all interested, this is the second one-shot I ever wrote in this little universe - it's also the only one I re-wrote about sixty-seven times because I couldn't get it to work (and then I just gave up and left it alone so). Pure fluff. You've been warned.

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* * *

**Where The Road Begins And Ends**

It's not like they haven't talked about it. You know. They have. Hypothetically.

Spike knows how they'd raise their hypothetical kids, all three of them, how they'd have to play good cop/bad cop with them (obviously, he'd be good cop; even if Winnie _had_ rolled her eyes when he'd pointed out that he had more experience with psychological warfare, he's reasonably sure she agreed with him), where they'd live, how they'd spend their Christmases.

He's been around married people before, has tried his goddamned best to figure out how they just _knew_. He's watched Ed and Wordy and Sam and all he seems to have figured out is that a woman walked past them one day and they were done. It makes no reasonable sense, he's even tried googling how to know that you're ready to marry someone because yes, he and Winnie have talked hypothetical but it's like he looked at her one morning and stopped wanting it to be hypothetical and it's the least logical thing he's ever come across in his entire life.

And it's probably completely nonsensical to just know that there's never going to be anyone else for him because rational sense tells him that he hasn't met every single person in the world so how exactly could he make such a blanket statement but. Winnie lying on the floor of their bedroom laughing with tears in her eyes because he'd said something that he didn't even find that hilarious, Winnie sitting on the hood of the car waiting for him after a bad shift, Winnie leaning over to kiss him while he's mid-sentence, Winnie proudly showing him that she'd folded all their laundry and then heading off to work and leaving him to redo all the socks because she hadn't matched any of them right. The bottom line is – he wants all of that for as long as they get, wants it to be official and proper and recognized. He just doesn't know how to put it all into words that she'll understand.

He knows that she's not going to change her last name (someone asked her once, as she was cramming Doritos into her mouth, if she would hypothetically, take a guy's name and her response had been, "Take it where?" with crumbs flying all over the place and her eyes fixed on the hockey game. To be fair, the Leafs had been up two and there were only two minutes left in the third. Plus, he knows what she thinks about people who talk through hockey games so-anyhow. Not the point), that when they have kids, they're not hyphenating because she thinks Scarlatti is bad enough for a first grader without throwing the Camden in there too. It's just – so they both know all of this stuff, both know where it's been going since he first asked her out, way back when, across a desk, how she'd turned him down in the nicest way possible, how he'd gone and fallen in love with her before she'd even changed her mind.

But. He's still nervous as all fuck, thinks maybe she'll find the ring weird or maybe ugly, like maybe he's read everything about her wrong and she'll want yellow gold with a plain diamond solitaire (which is just – okay that's not what she's getting. Unless that's what she wants, in which case, he'll think of something). Is worried that maybe she'll think it's too soon or not soon enough or like however he asks her is not going to be what she wants.

(He went to see her mom, alone, on his day off, manners drilled into him from the time he was too young to understand what they meant. Cleared his throat for thirty-five minutes and then just put the box on the table, didn't even get to ask for anything because she let out an exclamation and then hugged him tightly.

He asked her brother too and James had played hardball with him, pulled a "What are you going to do if I say no?" and Spike rolled his eyes and with bravado he wasn't entirely sure he actually possessed said, "You going to do that to her?" and James had gone silent and then snorted and said, "Fucking SRU," like he was grinning down the phone).

Here's the point Spike's trying to make: he hid a ring for a full six weeks in his sock drawer and then woke up at three in the morning one Tuesday wondering what would happen if Winnie wanted to borrow a pair of his socks – and even at the time, he'd thought it was insane because in all the years he'd known her and lived with her and loved her, she'd never gone rooting around in his sock drawer but still, it was a thing that could happen – and since then, he's been carrying it around with him. It's starting to border on ridiculous and possibly a little bit insane and he thinks it may be best to just give it to her, let her worry about keeping it safe.

But he can't just _ask_ her, can't get the right words out of his mouth. Doesn't even know what the right words are.

They're supposed to go to Italy in a week and his Ma has been asking him every single night for weeks now if Winnie's said yes (and like, what can he say? "Sorry, haven't worked up the balls to ask her yet, try again in a year"? Somehow, he doesn't think that's going to go over well with his Ma), plus he's just starting to wonder if girls really do want to get asked in a crowd full of people like in all those movies. But then again, every time they watch one, Winnie cackles madly and chucks her popcorn at the tv even though he's told her that if she's going to insist on doing that, she's going to have to pick it all up so who even knows.

And why yes, if anyone's asking, he _has_ totally been over-thinking the whole entire thing which is why he hasn't been able to ask her yet.

It's not like he hasn't _tried_, of course he has. Twice over dinner – once at home, once at a restaurant – twice before work, once in the car, once on the way back from Loblaws. He's starting to get desperate, actually and she's got to know something's up with him, how he keeps getting tongue-tied around her. It's kind of like back when she'd first said yes, she'd go out with him and then he hadn't known what to do about it so he'd nodded and gone silent.

He's lost count of how many times he's cleared his throat and started talking, found he couldn't find the right words, ended up just trailing off and then finished off by asking her if she wanted an apple. It's gotten to the point where she's flat out refused to buy them anymore.

He gets home from work (Winnie's day off, house smells nice, like maybe she baked a pie or something which – not a thing she likes doing so he has no idea why he gets home sometimes and finds the whole house smelling like peaches and sugar), calls out, "Just me!"

"I know – up here! Bedroom!"

He climbs the stairs, opening his mouth to ask her how her day was and stops abruptly, their bedroom covered in clothes and shoes and two open suitcases.

"Hey Hot Stuff," she says, leering at him. Cracks up laughing when he rolls his eyes at her, like she thinks she's the funniest thing that's ever existed.

"What are you doing?"

She looks at him like he's an idiot and says, "Packing. Duh. We leave in two days. I've got nothing and we're both going to be exhausted after shift tomorrow." She raises an eyebrow. "You should probably look through what I've put in your suitcase though – you might end up in leather pants and crop tops the whole time."

He snorts, finds his mouth twitching even though he's trying his very best to glare at her.

"How was work?" She's folding this top that's so sheer, it's fully see-through and he suddenly wants to know just what _exactly_ she's been packing all day.

"Same old. Ed ran us into the ground. Typical."

"And New Guy?" He hears the capital letters, same as it's been since Jules went on mat leave.

Spike makes a face. "He's fine. I mean. I think Leah's ready to strangle him but. It's not like it's forever. He's a good sniper." He says it a little grudgingly, almost wishes the guy was worse at his job so they could drop him.

"I still don't know what Boss was thinking," she huffs and he still remembers New Guy's first shift, when he'd still been willing to give the guy a chance (Winnie had rolled her eyes at him and he can't figure out how she knew before he did but there you go).

He laughs. "I think he was hoping none of us would get too attached. Make sure Jules came back."

She folds a pair of shorts and slams them into her suitcase a little more viciously than he thinks is necessary. "Yeah but we're the ones that have to put up with him the whole time she's gone. He's got some seriously bad lines and he's not half as charming as he thinks he is."

"He been hitting on you?"

She rolls her eyes at him, gives him this slightly pitying look like whatever planet he lives on must be so nice and special. It makes him snicker. "How are you surprised? Thought I was the only one escaping it?"

It's probably stupid for him to want to head right back to work, wait for the guy and then throw him up against a locker. And probably childish. (But also, he thinks it would be very satisfying and he knows Leah would watch the door for him.) "But he knows that-"

She snorts. "Yeah I don't really think he cares. Plus, now he's gotta know it's never happening."

"Now?"

She snickers, gives him this innocent wide-eyed gaze (it still gets her out of lots of stuff, "of course I didn't eat the last cookie, Sam", "who, me, Ed?", "Boss, would I ever drink the last of the coffee and not make more?" but yeah, now he knows better than to take that look at face value).

"What did you do?" He's grinning, remembers seeing this one guy on the receiving end of Winnie's temper one night at The Goose, back before they were anything other than co-workers. Actually, he distinctly remembers thinking that he sure was glad he didn't have a woman like that waiting for him at home because it would just be way too much for him but if anyone asks, he'll deny it.

She shrugs at him, face all lit up with a grin. "I was the consummate professional, obviously. Boss was there, you can ask him. How's Sam? Still sleep-deprived?"

He makes a face, cracks his neck. "Isn't he always? You know, he makes a really great case for birth control, they should take him to high schools." Look, he likes kids as much as the next guy and he loves Sadie Braddock beyond reason but he's also got a healthy respect for the bags under Sam's eyes.

She laughs, throws a t-shirt at him that he catches and whips right back at her. "You're the worst. He's got two young kids at home and they've both got the flu. I bet Wordy was the same back in the day."

"Probably. I don't think that gets taken into account on the obstacle course though."

She smiles up at him, drops a skirt on the top of her packed clothes and he catches a glimpse of something lacy. It has him raising his eyebrows at her. "There's food in the oven – don't get too excited, I have no idea if it turned out okay or not. And I made a pie." She sounds all proud of herself.

He smiles at her, shakes his head. "How'd I get so lucky?" He's extremely serious and it's got nothing at all to do with coming home to find dinner waiting for him.

She laughs, gives him a look. "Don't butter me up till you've tasted it."

"You coming?"

"Two seconds."

He waits for her, hauls her to her feet and then kisses her. Quirks his lips. "Think dinner can wait for a bit?"

"What? Why-" Starts giggling when he bends to kiss her neck and starts walking her backwards towards the bed.

* * *

The morning they leave for Italy, he tries to ask her again. "Hey Winnie?"

"Yeah?" She's tugging on the strap of her purse, trying to get it straightened out through the buckle and he chickens out because apparently, he's _that_ guy.

"Um. Nothing."

She gives him a weird look and then goes back to what she was doing (it's just – she's used to him, by now. Doesn't freak out when she comes across pages and pages on wires and switches, doesn't freak out when she finds him mixing acids together in the back yard with his laptop next to him, doesn't freak out if he disappears for hours into the basement at HQ, tools laid out beside him on the ground and surrounded by bits of Babycakes. In fact, sometimes, it sounds like she thinks Babycakes is a real person which is actually really funny because everyone knows it's a robot).

He slips out of the kitchen, wonders what in the hell is wrong with him, that he can't just _ask_ her. Like is this something he needs to seek psychiatric assistance for? He has no idea. Times like this, he really misses Lew (although, he does kind of suspect that if Lew _were_ here, he'd be killing himself laughing and offering no help at all).

He chickens out for another full week. His Ma shakes her head at him whenever Winnie turns her back and he's almost relieved when they leave to spend their last five days in Greece (just – Winnie's always wanted to go, they've never had the chance before and he wants to give her all the things she wants).

He keeps looking for the perfect moment, and there are hundreds. Sightseeing, where she's staring up at something, the sea a perfect blue and the houses white, pristine against it. Dinners when she's got tzatziki on her fingers and her mouth is full. After dinner, when they sit on their balcony, two glasses of wine beside them and what in the fuck is _wrong_ with him that he can't just get the words out?

They've got two days left and they're walking on the beach, her fingers laced with his. She's in a dress, all strappy and light and the sun is low in the sky, almost setting on the horizon and his fingers close on the box in his pocket and he starts talking about fuck knows what and she's just staring at him with this bemused expression on her face (and he supposes that it's a bit much to be talking about internet memes and existentialism and organic farming but he got started and doesn't know how to get back on track now and it's absolutely appalling of him to be thinking about proposing on vacation and he's about ninety-seven percent sure Winnie's going to think it's cheesy as all hell but he's been carrying the ring around with him for so long that it's sort of become a really ridiculous habit and also, he just really wants to marry her).

So he pulls the box out and asks, trips over the words so bad he doesn't even know if she understands what he's even said.

And she just stares at him. Funny thing is, she doesn't really look surprised. A little shocked, maybe, but not surprised. He can hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears.

Like, their feet are in the water and the bottom of her dress is getting wet and he suddenly thinks '_Shit_, am I supposed to be _kneeling_ here?' and her mouth is kind of open and she hasn't even looked at the ring-

"How's tomorrow?"

He starts laughing, a little bit of relief and also the fact that years and years after the fact, he can still be totally floored by her, shakes his head at her, smiling. "Hilarious." He'd have settled for a "yes" or a "sure" or even an "okay" but he's not picky.

"I'm not kidding."

There's a pause. "I-are you _serious_?"

She's smiling too, and he hasn't been able to look away from her the whole time he's known her, how she fills everything he sees. "Why not?"

Is she serious? Seriously? How about they haven't planned _anything_ and isn't she going to want flowers and cake and it's so not what he should be thinking about but the next words out of his mouth are, "Because it's not _normal_, there'll be no white dress and no-"

She laughs and then hurriedly pulls her face straight like she thinks she might have offended him. "I don't want a white dress," she says with an eye roll, all impatient, like if that was his way of trying to convince her not to marry him tomorrow, it was a sincerely poor effort. "I just want you."

He looks at her, feels his chest constrict a little when he does, how he just knows that it's her, that it's always going to be her, that it's been her from the start and maybe even before that too. Plus, you know. He's not entirely certain that he's capable of saying no to her so. There's that. He's aware that he's just staring at her stupidly, feels the grin start way down in his stomach. "Yeah? You can tell your mother that when she wants to _shoot_ me. In fact, we'll get her and my Ma together in a room and you can tell them both at the same time." He pauses. "I'm also not dealing with Ed. Or Leah."

She steps right into his space, slides her arms around his neck and shrugs, this smile on her face like he's never seen before. "We'll invite them to dinner. They can't complain if they're getting dinner."

He snorts and kisses her and two seconds into the kiss, pushes her away and says, "Just to be clear-"

She laughs, cuts him off mid-sentence with the kind of kiss he feels in his toes, the kind that makes him want to tear off her clothes and also, never let go of her.

They get themselves a marriage license and if he finds a way to "hurry the process along" with the assistance of his laptop, no one has to know about it, and if his Ma could see how this is about to go down, she'd probably burst into tears.

Spike doesn't care though because Winnie's grinning at him across three feet of space and her voice shakes and he's fairly certain that he steps forward before the end, until he's right up against her and she laughs against his mouth.

They stay up all night and the way she smiles, how she lies on her side and gazes at him, how she leans her chin against his shoulder and laces their fingers together as they spend hours talking about nothing at all - well, possibly, he should have done this months and years and decades ago. They're watching the sun rise when she says, "The ring's beautiful, by the way."

"Yeah?" That's definitely relief he's feeling.

"Yeah. It's perfect."

Also, if his Ma could see how they can't wear their wedding bands, she'd definitely burst into tears and even he's a little scandalized by their bad luck but Winnie thinks it's hilarious, leans over the bed wheezing with laughter, tells him that's what you get when you buy cheap stuff that turns your fingers green, waits until he starts laughing too before she pounces on him, long kisses that leave him gasping her name.

It's also completely surreal because he spent weeks telling himself he was going to ask her to marry him and in a day and a half, he doesn't have to tell himself that anymore and he's waiting for that feeling like he's going to burst into hysterical laughter at any second to go away. It does, gets replaced by this feeling like maybe the world turned a little and its axis got righted (yeah, he's not repeating that one, far too embarrassing. True though).

She's leaning against his arm, sunglasses on, yawning and he clears his throat. "Regrets?" he asks her as they get on the plane.

She lowers her shades, rolls her eyes like he's just made the stupidest suggestion ever. "Oh a hundred. Saddled with a bomb tech till I die? I couldn't even manage lead negotiator? That really sucks." She starts laughing before she's even through and he rolls his eyes, does his best to glare at her and fails miserably. She pauses and leans against him, lets him pull her closer to him, the fingers of his right hand firmly pressed to her hip bone, and her voice is all warm when she says, "Never."

So that's how it goes. They go on vacation and come back married and all he can think about is that everything's _different_ now.

Except, then, things don't really feel that different. Their house is still their house and she's vacuuming as he folds the laundry (and seriously, she's not doing that great a job but he's learned to live with it), sound system way up and he looks at her and gets this jolt like wow, she's my _wife_. He unplugs the vacuum cleaner from the wall, lets her glare at him, tell him that she was _busy_, honestly, he's just so _rude_ and then he grabs her, pulls her over his shoulder and carries her up the stairs and she giggles until he makes her stop.

He gets that jolt again when he sees her shovelling toast into her mouth two mornings later, both of them running late because they never actually went to bed and she pushes a mug at him and he just hopes he never gets used to it. Of course, then she drops crumbs all over the counter and he makes a face at her and everything's the same again.

They still haven't had the time to _tell _anyone else (it's just – he can already hear it now, strains of 'what do you mean you _eloped_?' and 'what do you mean you're _married_?', explanations he's not going to be able to offer because he's not entirely sure how it happened that way either), thinks his Ma might find a way to kill him, actually, to say nothing about what the rest of the team will do and honestly, every time they sit down to start planning this dinner they're going to tell everyone at, Winnie ends up distracting him (she keeps saying it's not her fault but if it _really_ wasn't her fault, she'd stop strutting around in her underwear). The bottom line of which is that no one knows that they're married yet.

Shift is over and Winnie's at her desk, ring on her finger (it's weird but it looks better on her right hand so that's where she puts it and he doesn't really give a shit where she puts it, knows it's beyond _dumb_ but the fact that she has it on at all is pretty much enough for him) and she grins at him, gives him this smile that makes him want to shift his feet and then drag her into the filing room, expression all soft and open when she looks at him, and New Guy starts up with the hitting on her right in front of him.

She looks bored and it's not like Spike is the jealous type or anything, especially since he can out-maneuver New Guy on every single test the SRU has so he just leans on the desk, clears his throat, channels Boss on a morning with no coffee and goes, "Do you mind? That's my wife you're talking to."

Winnie's head whips in his direction and the rest of the Team totally shuts up and New Guy splutters and then disappears to the locker room and there's just silence (able-to-hear-a-pin-drop kind of silence and Spike just knows Lew would be pissing himself at the timing).

He's a little worried that he's overstepped but his eyes find Winnie's and she's laughing and her cheeks are pink. It makes him smile, the way it has ever since he's known her.

"Hang on – _what_?" It's Sam who breaks the silence, this grin growing on his face and really, Spike should have known his brother would never have asked for any explanation whatsoever.

Leah lets out a whoop. "Pay up!"

The rest of them grumble like crazy but it's exactly the way it should be, Boss hugging him tightly and then Winnie, whispering something in her ear and Winnie's giggling when Ed grabs her hand to get a good look at the ring (points out that she's wearing it on the wrong hand, what with all the reading Spike does, doesn't he know it goes on the left, a huge grin on his face and Winnie tosses her hair and says, "Yeah, I know," looks way too fucking pleased about it) and Sam gets Jules on speaker phone, shares this look with Spike that says a thousand things that they're never going to have to actually say and Leah collects twenty bucks a piece and when Spike leans over later and asks her what exactly it is she bet on, she snorts and says, "That you'd run off with her. Who called this whole thing from the start?"

He shoots her an exasperated look but he's laughing.

And, as he catches Winnie's eye from where he's sitting in the briefing room and she grins and he thinks that he's hers for a whole lifetime and that he's never going to get tired of making her happy, he thinks that the next time Leah points something out and tells him to get on board, he's just going to do it, no questions asked.


End file.
